Said Without Irony

My, that’s some tasty kool-aid.

It is meant to be the most clear democratising feature of the EU's new rulebook, the Lisbon Treaty, but implementation of the "citizen's initiative" is a political minefield and is prompting much discussion about the danger of the tool turning into a mockery of democracy.

As opposed to, say, pandering to the public with the concept, of course. Even with it, the only less direct form of government there is to the EU is sitting in Pyongyang, where “the people” are said to have been in charge for 6 decades.

The modified proposal sees the commission decides at the moment it registers the initiative if it is fundamentally silly or against European "values."

Read into that all you like – if you can read it at all. Otherwise, enter “the activists”, those with a cause mentality that is more interested in perfecting the art of pretending that any citizen may have a say:

At a hearing on the issue organised by the parliament's Liberal group on Tuesday (22 June), democracy and civil society activists lined up to criticise the proposal.

What’s rather obvious is that the debate, now over 100 000 or 1 000 000 signatures are needed to rase a point any single lawmaker alone is permitted to raise, has entirely to do with the possible content of what the citizens are interested in: things that matter to them. We all know that that can’t be tolerated. After all, “the world” is watching them!

Others took issue with the commission's argument that 100,000 signatures have to be gathered before admissibility is considered, arguing it is too burdensome. The commission says that deciding on admissibility too early would see screeching media headlines like "Brussels gives greenlight to abortion."

Or anything else initiated by actual citizens, for that matter.