Server problems still haunting EU’s first 'citizens' initiatives'

EurActiv ^ | 12 July 2012

[Olog-hai]

Fraternité 2020, the first registered European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI), will start collecting signatures as soon as the organizers have overcome server problems. The organizers from the Citizens’ Committee still maintain the goal of collecting one million signatures from all over Europe by May 2013.

Fraternité 2020 organizers want to enhance EU exchange programmes such as the Erasmus student exchange scheme or the European Voluntary Service (EVS) in order to contribute to a united Europe.

To collect the signatures, Fraternité 2020 organizers made the decision to do it online only.

Therefore, they need to set up what is called an online collection system (OCS). The OCS consists of two parts: the software to collect the signatures, and the servers to run them. The servers are provided free of charge by the European Commission, but they have not been working since it was set up in May, so the Austrian IT company More-onion has offered the Fraternité 2020 citizens’ Committee the certification of the online production system for €7,200.

“Unfortunately, the offer is only valid until 26 July because they are busy with other projects,” Simona Pronckute, member of the initiative's citizens’ committee, told a press conference at the European Parliament on Wednesday (11 July). …

[Olog-hai]

To me, it looks like the Citizens’s Initiative is merely a means of gathering names. The EU Commission sure isn’t obliged to introduce any such initiative into law (the Commission is the executive and has the sole power to start bills; the Parliament has no power to do that, so one can see no separation of powers here).