Brussels – The European Commission has rejected the European Citizens’ Initiative titled “Save Europe Act”, which called for a moratorium on new channels of non-Western immigration and a radical overhaul of European migration and asylum policies. The European Commission has decided not to register the initiative, considering that the criteria underpinning the proposal are incompatible with the fundamental values of the Union, in particular the principle of non-discrimination. The European Commission explained this in a note.
According to the Berlaymont Building, the initiative does not comply with “the formal conditions laid down in the regulation on European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI)”, the instrument introduced by the Lisbon Treaty, which allows EU citizens to ask the European Commission to put forward new legislative proposals, as was the case with the My Voice My Choice campaign for safe and accessible abortion. “To meet the conditions for registration, a European Citizens’ Initiative must not be manifestly contrary to the values enshrined in the Treaty and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU”, explained the European Commission.
Presented by its organisers as an attempt to “save Europe,” the initiative called on the Commission to propose legislation introducing a “temporary moratorium on new non-Western immigration channels,” including visas for study and family reunification. According to the organisers, the proposal is based on the need to preserve the “ethnic and cultural continuity” of the “indigenous peoples of Europe” against what is described as “demographic replacement” caused by the arrival of “non-Western” and “non-European” migrants.
It was precisely these references that led the Commission to reject the application for registration. According to the European Commission, the criteria identified for establishing the moratorium “would constitute discrimination on grounds of race and ethnic origin,” thereby contravening the principles enshrined in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU), Article 21 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU, of non-discrimination, and the established case law of the European Court of Justice.
If the initiative is not registered, the organisers will not be able to start collecting the signatures required to turn the initiative into a formal request to the European Commission. An ECI, in fact, can only proceed once registration has been approved and must collect at least one million signatures from European citizens in at least seven Member States. Only then is the Commission required to examine the proposal and decide whether or not to present a legislative proposal.
Since the official launch of the European Citizens’ Initiative in April 2012, the European Commission has registered 135 proposals. The European Commission has reiterated that “the content of the initiatives reflects only the views of their organisers and cannot in any way be taken to reflect the views of the European Commission.”
