OK, now it's the first Citizens Initiative - or not?

Back in October I wrote about how the first "European Citizens Initiative", a new right to petition the EU enabled by the Lisbon Treaty, was going to be about genetically modified crops - or so-called "Frankenfoods" as the European tabloid press likes to call them. Even though the institutions were still crafting exactly how the citizens initiative was going to work, it was thought at the time that citizens could still submit their petitions in the mean time. Plenty of legal wrangling ensued, and the Commission has come to the opinion that it does not yet have to officially accept petitions. The European Parliament, on the other hand, thinks that they do. The issue has still not been resolved, because the Commission and the Parliament can't agree on how the Citizen's Initiative should work.

Today Greenpeace got fed up with waiting and staged a demonstration outside the commission demanding that Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso come outside and officially accept their petition, which calls on the EU to stop approving GM crops. But instead of the commission president, the only one to emerge was Health Commissioner John Dalli. Meeting the activists on the giant 380 square meter carpet containing all 1 million signatures collected, Dalli said "I can assure you that there is a political will to listen to everybody and one million signatures is a voice that we should listen to." Photos were taken, handshakes were made, and Dalli walked back into the Berlaymont building. The commission then quickly put out a press statement saying that the commissioner had "received" the petition. But speculation soon spread both outside and inside the commission headquarters - what does "received" mean? Did the commission officially accept the petition?

EU smoking ban in the works for next year

They've made tenuous moves in the past, but this time it looks like they're serious. Yesterday EU health chief John Dalli told a German newspaper that the European Commission will make a push to ban smoking in all public places, transport and workspaces throughout the EU next year. It is an ambitious idea considering that the status of smoking in public places currently varies widely across the union, and even the United States has been unable or unwilling to try to put in place a federal smoking ban.

Last year the European Commission took a rather half-hearted stand on public smoking, merely encouraging member states to adopt their own smoking bans by 2012. But since then a new commission has come to power and the new health commissioner appears to be more aggressive on the issue than his predecessor. He wants to propose new legislation next year to reduce the amount of nicotine used in cigarettes, make shopkeepers keep cigarettes out of view from customers and enforce new labelling requirements on cigarette packs. He also told the newspaper that he wants to push for an EU-wide smoking ban.