In July, a group of people set off to do a hard thing, but an important thing.<\/p>\n
They wanted to collect 1 million signatures.<\/p>\n
Once attained, those 1 million signatures would force the European Commission to discuss an immediate halt to the ongoing trade talks between the EU and U.S. These talks are known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. For short, they are called the TTIP.<\/p>\n
Having already achieved nearly three-quarters of the signatures through the European Commission\u2019s official process \u2013 the European Citizen\u2019s Initiative (ECI) \u2013 we should be celebrating.<\/p>\n
We aren\u2019t celebrating. Here\u2019s why:<\/p>\n
On 11 September, just days before the ECI was to launch publicly by 230 organisations in 21 countries, the Commission announced that it was rejecting the ECI altogether. It claimed that the call to stop the TTIP \u201cfalls outside the framework of the Commission\u2019s powers to submit a proposal for a legal act of the Union\u201d. The Commission argued that we could use an ECI to request an agreement, but we can\u2019t use an ECI to stop something we didn\u2019t ask for and don\u2019t want.<\/p>\n