Instead of Disaster a Triumph: The European Parliament’s Hearing on the European Citizen’s Initiative “One of Us”

By J.C. von Krempach, J.D. | April 12, 2014

Unfortunately, due to other obligations, I did not have the possibility to be present at the hearing. What I write here is what I have seen on the complete webstream of the meeting, as well as of interviews with those who had themselves been present.

While, after having read the draft agenda that was handed down by the European Parliament’s administration on Wednesday afternoon, we had all reasons to fear a disaster, the hearing was a great and unique moment in the Parliament’s history. Fighting bravely back against a brazen attempt of a small but powerful clique of politicians to hijack and pervert the event, the representatives of the “One of Us” citizens’ committee gave a veritable showdown to their opponents both within the Parliament itself and the European Commission. Instead of lecturing the citizens, the institutions were forced to listen. And for those who listened carefully, this meeting must have brought a lot of insight.

But disaster was close. We have already commented on the brazen attempt of some MEPs with close links to the well–funded abortion industry to reserve two-thirds of the speaking time in the hearing for themselves, so that it would be their radical and obscurantist ideas, rather than those promoted by the citizens’ initiative, that would receive a hearing. The citizens’ committee was left with no other choice than to threaten a boycott of the hearing, and it was only due to this credible threat of what – just one month before the elections – might have been the biggest possible PR-disaster in the EU’s entire history, that the agenda of the hearing was adjusted in extremis.

The most important change in the agenda was that more speaking time was allotted to the citizens’ committee, and that the committee’s lead representative, our blog author Grégor Puppinck, was allowed to intervene as the first speaker, thereby forestalling possible attempts of hostile MEPs to misrepresent the content of the petition. The number of MEPs with reserved speaking slots was also reduced. However, it was apparently not possible to remove from the speakers’ list Françoise Castex and Michael Cashman, who already prior to the hearing had signed up to a highly inappropriate and denigratory statement sponsored by the abortion lobby, in which the citizens’ initiative was denounced as “open threat against women’s rights and against the basic human’s right to live in dignity”. Ms. Castex was even given assigned the task of presiding over the last part of the hearing, a role she fulfilled rather disgracefully.

Credit must, by contrast, be given to the Spanish MEP Teresa Riera Madurell, who despite her clearly critical stance towards the initiative presided over the first part of the meeting with fairness and serenity, and whose charm and politeness did a lot to overcome the tensions prior to the hearing.

A video of the hearing is available at YouTube.

Grégor Puppinck made a formidable start, telling the audience that organizer’s committee did not consider this hearing to be the end of its venture, but that there was now a clear expectation for the Commission to launch a regular legislative procedure on the basis of the proposal that had been endorsed by nearly 1.9 million citizens: “Our proposals are within the competences of the European Union”, he said, “and they are in line with European law and fundamental rights.  This has already been verified and certified by the European Commission during the examination prior to the official registration of the Initiative. (…) Our proposal is simple and clear.  It is based on the European experience.  Furthermore it is fair and beneficial.” The Commission, he pointed out, was now under an obligation to move this proposal forward if it did not want to jeopardize the credibility of the European Citizens’ Initiative as an instrument of participatory democracy.

This set the tone, and Puppinck remained the dominant figure throughout the rest of the meeting, exhibiting spirit, good humour, and flamboyant rhetoric, rebutting with the greatest ease whatever attacks the MEPs opposing the initiative would throw at him. He was assisted in this task by the Italian lawyer Filippo Vari, who brilliantly exposed the total inadequacy of the ethical safeguard clauses in the EU’s research program “Horizon 2020”, and by Sophia Kuby, the Director of the Brussels-based NGO “European Dignity Watch”, who briefly summarized a comprehensive report by her organization on the funding of abortions through EU Development Aid funds.

After having used all their elbow to secure places on the panels of the hearing, the initiative’s opponents had surprisingly little to offer both in terms of arguments and rhetoric. Their contributions consisted in shrill ad hominem attacks and completely unfounded suppositions about the initiative’s financing. On the rare occasions in which they actually attempted to engage with the petition’s content, their arguments remained feeble and unconvincing. The absolute nadir was reached when Michael Cashman claimed that the Cairo ICPD 1994 constituted an international obligation for the EU to continue funding abortion in developing countries (in fact, as Ms. Kuby compellingly exposed, the ICPD is neither legally binding, nor does it contain such an obligation), or when he sought to demonstrate the necessity of legalising abortion by comparing the maternal mortality of African and Latin American countries with those of the EU. (In fact, maternal mortality depends on a great quantity of different causes, so that Mr. Cashman’s comparison makes little or no sense. He should instead have compared like with like. For example, he might have searched for data somewhat closer to home, comparing the incidence of maternal deaths in Ireland and the UK. Had he done so, he would have discovered that the latest available WHO statistics report that in  2010 in Ireland there were 6 cases of maternal mortality for each 100.000 lifebirths, whereas in the UK there were 12. If liberal abortion laws have an effect on maternal mortality, it must be that they significantly increase the risk. But ideologues like Mr. Cahman will always remain blind to facts that don’t fit to their beliefs.)

In the end, one must actually be grateful for Mr. Cashman, Ms. Castex, and other outspoken opponents of the initiative, for having participated in this hearing. Each of their interventions provided further proof for both the weakness of their reasoning and their unwillingness to engage in an open and fair debate. This culminated in Ms. Castex’ closing statement, in which she made a last-ditch effort to discredit the petition by grossly misrepresenting its scope and purpose. This viciously unfair move by someone who was supposed to act as a fair chairperson provoked loud jeers and catcalls from the audience that did not end until Ms. Castex had left the room. It is regrettable that the hearing did not end on a friendlier tone, but in this case the angry reactions of the audience were fully justified.

A regrettable unwillingness to engage with what was said by the citizens’ committee was also apparent in the representatives of the European Commission. The Director General for Research Policy, Robert-Jan Smits, astonished the audience by apodictically asserting that the Commission had put in place rigorous ethical standards for the research projects it funded, without making even making the an attempt to engage with the detailed analysis that had been provided by the representative of the citizens’ committee, Mr. Vari, on why those standards are completely inadequate. It was as if he had simply not been listening to the presentation. Very much in the same vein, Commissioner Andris Piebalgs did not find it worthwhile to clarify whether the use of EU funds to finance abortion in developing countries happened with, or without, the Commission’s consent and approval, and, if the latter, what he intended to do in order to put a halt to such misuse of taxpayers’ money. His silence was truly agonizing, in particular after having listened to Ms. Kuby’s explanations on the gruesome details of the abortions procured by organizations such as IPPF and Marie Stopes, each of which receive generous financial support from the European Commission. Markus Cornaro, Deputy Director General of DG Development, made a rather non-committal statement about the Commission’s intentions to follow-up on the hearing. He asserted that only around 0.5 percent of the EU’s development aid funding was spent on “potentially dubious” activities such as those mentioned in Ms. Kuby’s intervention. (If that is so, then one may suppose it must be no big deal for the Commission to put a halt to stop funding those “potentially dubious” programs, and instead spend the money on less dubious activities – and one wonders which reasons might prevent the Commission from doing so.) But at the same time he seemed rather unsure whether the Commission really had full control of what the money it gave to partners like IPPF and Marie Stopes was actually used for.

The closing statement of Grégor Puppinck deserves to be reproduced in full:

We have not only come to testify. The Citizen’s Initiative “One of Us” does not end today. On the contrary, today is the beginning of the legislative process of shared initiative.

Our initiative holds the EU institutions not only to their moral responsibility, but also to their democratic responsibility.

The European Citizens’ Initiative mechanism was created in order to share the European legislative initiative with European citizens. This instrument aims to open the EU to citizens’ participation, and strengthen its democratic legitimacy the weakness of which was so heavily felt for so many years. It is now vital for the credibility of the European institutions that the expectations and hopes that are related to this proposal are not disappointed.

The “One of Us” Initiative is not only the one that has attracted the most support across Europe and is the most representative, but it is also the first to date to contain a specific legislative proposal that concretely specifies the changes we would like to see made to European Union legislation.

During the official registration of the Initiative, the legislative proposal was subject to prior review by the Commission which has verified and certified that it fully complies with the fundamental rights and basic values of the primary law of the European Union.

In addition, this proposal is simple and realistic and will not incur expenses for the EU budget. There are therefore neither practical obstacles nor substantive considerations which could justify a Commission decision not to launch a legislative procedure based on the content of our Initiative. We therefore expect the European Commission to introduce our legislative proposal and submit it for consideration by the Parliament and the Council, with some purely technical modifications which may be necessary, but which do not affect the substance of this proposal.

The political desirability of the legislative proposal is demonstrated by the popular support of two million people, and it is not for the Commission to decide on this point at this stage of the proceedings. The Commission does not consider the political desirability of a Citizens’ Initiative: it is the people directly who do, since more than one million citizens support the Initiative.

It is very clear that the purpose of Article 11 of the TEU is to give citizens the initiative of legislative procedures such as this one, without it being possible for it to be blocked in an arbitrary manner.

What would be the point of the mechanism of Citizens’ Initiative if only the proposals that appeal to the European Commission had a chance to be introduced into the legislative process! What good would it do to gather more than one million signatures? The Citizens’ Initiative mechanism would be useless.  Worse, it would be a caricature of participatory democracy, which would further reduce the popular legitimacy of the European institutions.

Because it is up to the next Parliament and the Council of the European Union which are vested with legislative powers, it is for them to discuss and vote on the legislative project proposed by the “One of Us” Initiative.

Be assured that we will never give up.

The Commission’s communication with regard to a possible follow-up to the citizen’s initiative is due to be published before 28 May.

 

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