In the midst of the Coronavirus outbreak, Science for Democracy, together with Eumans and other European organizations, submitted a petition to the European Parliament for a common European response to the Covid19 social, economic and health crisis. The petition was originally conceived during the 1st Meeting of the Council on Participatory Democracy and then submitted to the EP on March 24th 2020. Over 8,000 citizens, Nobel Prizes, European Mayors and civil society organisations supported it. After the public hearing by the PETI Committee of the European Parliament, the Petition had been sent to the AFCO Committee and to the Working Group on the Conference on the Future of Europe.
A proposal for a joint management of the social, economic and health crisis
The petition calls on the EP to implement the adequate mechanisms to resume its work as soon as possible, and to organize a space for the elaboration, proposal and mobilization of all possible instruments. The current EU institutional system has shown its weakness and inadequacy.
In addition to short term measures, it is necessary to relaunch the initiative of democratic reform of the EU in order to make it fit for purpose.
The EP must be at the forefront of this effort, and urge the EU to push for a strategy to trigger this path, based on 5 pillars:
- Giving a systemic and common response of the European Union to the Covid-19 crisis;
- Enhancing reforming the EU healthcare and civic protection instruments and competences to respond to outbreaks;
- Implementing all economic, financial and monetary policy measures to allow the EU to unlock resources and common measures to support citizens with the consequences of the pandemic, including measures for the mutualisation of public debts, own resources for the EU budget, according to a radical ecological reform of European taxation (including the acceleration of the Green New Deal);
- Turning the first stages of the Conference on the Future of Europe into a public online assembly and reshape its goals;
- Contributing to a global mechanism to prevent and face epidemics and pandemics
Key milestones
After efforts to have an urgency procedure activated, and after gathering the support of 8000+ European citizens and of a group of European mayors led by Leoluca Orlando, Mayor of Palermo (Italy), on April 30th 2020, Virginia Fiume (Eumans coordinator) presented the petition in front of the PETI Committee of the European Parliament.
As a result, the petition has been sent for an opinion to the Committee on Constitutional Affairs of the European Parliament and to the working group on the Conference on the Future of Europe.