Wed, 25 May 2011

ELIANT campaign hands over signatures to EU Commission

BRUSSELS (NNA) – The European Alliance of Initiatives for Applied Anthroposophy/ELIANT has handed over more than a million signatures to the European Commission in Brussels as part of its campaign to improve the legal framework for safeguarding the position of anthroposophical services and products.

The 1,001,671 signatures from 27 EU member states were presented to the Commissioner for Health and Consumers, John Dalli, on 13 May, who accepted them on behalf of Commission President José Manuel Barroso, the Alliance said in a statement.

At the same time ELIANT handed over a memorandum with 15 specific demands in the fields of agriculture, nutrition, health, education, curative education and research. Under agriculture and nutrition, for example, the campaign demands “no artificial vitamin fortification for biodynamic and other organic baby food”, or under health the development of “adequate legislative and regulatory frameworks to secure access to all Anthroposophic Medicinal Products for human use (AMP) equally for citizens in all European Member states”, to name but two of the demands.

“I am committed to look seriously at the request made through this petition on measures in support for various aspects of applied anthroposophy since over one million European citizens have signed it,” Dalli said.

“ELIANT's request is inspired by Article 11 of the Lisbon Treaty and the recently adopted regulation on citizens' initiatives. I also noted to the Alliance’s representatives that the Commission has already taken action on some of the petition’s aspects,” the Commissioner added.

“I also pointed out that the Council and European Parliament regulation on citizens' initiatives (no. 211/2011) is not yet in force and only applies as of 1 April 2012.”

Representatives from the Alliance had in turn drawn the attention of Commissioner Dalli to the fact that due to the urgency of some of its demands ELIANT had started to collect the signatures before the Lisbon Treaty entered into force. “For this reason ELIANT was not able to take account of every detail in the new rules for citizens’ initiatives,” they told the Commissioner.

ELIANT now intends to start working as a pioneer project for a European citizens’ initiative. According to the Alliance, there will be further specialist meetings with the competent directorates-general of the EU Commission. “It is anticipated that the Commission will respond in detail to the 15 demands in the memorandum,” the campaign said.

ELIANT will also present the one million signatures, with the additional 118,630 signatures from non-EU countries and 52,850 signatures from Switzerland, to the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers.

With the citizens’ initiative, the Lisbon Treaty formally introduced a new form of direct public participation in EU policy shaping by allowing “1 million citizens from at least one quarter of the EU Member States to invite the European Commission to bring forward proposals for legal acts in areas where the Commission has the power to do so”. On that basis ELIANT started its campaign to collect one million signatures.

However, the Commission also says on its website that “in accordance with the Regulation [no. 211/2011], it will only be possible to launch the first European Citizens' Initiatives from 1 April 2012”.

END/nna/cva

Links: www.eliant.eu

Memorandum: http://www.eliant.eu/new/userfiles/file/pdf/Memorandum%20Allianz%20ELIANT%202011.pdf

Item: 110525-01EN Date: 25. May 2011

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