The European Union is considering a proposal to allow the initiative process. See here for the proposal. It would require the signatures of 1,000,000 voters. The petition requirement also would provide that the initiative petition must have a substantial number of signatures from at least one-third of the nations in the European Union. These minimum signature requirements from individual countries vary from 72,000 in Germany (the most populous nation in the European Union) to 4,500 signatures from each of the lowest-population nations, which are Cyprus, Estonia, Luxembourg, and Malta.
The proposal suggests that a method be found to let voters sign the petition electronically. It also suggests a time limit of one year to gather the signatures. It provides that after 300,000 signatures had been collected and submitted, the European Union would examine the proposal to make sure that its topic is germane to the treaty that establishes the European Union. Thanks to Election Updates for the link.
P.R. and App.V. — in ALL regimes.
Very little or NO need for issue petitions.
See the gerrymander minority rule ROT in CA especially — with the nonstop zillion issue petitions on the ballots — due to the party hack Donkey / Elephant gerrymander robots in the CA legislature being apparently totally statist N-U-T-S.
When will CA divide into Donkey and Elephant regimes ???
ALL the world is watching. In 2011-2012 ???
Given the large population of the European Union, it seems to me like they should require more than 1,000,000 signatures.
Is there a uniform definition of Elector-Voter in the EU for EU election law purposes ???
If NO, then one more screwed up idea — especially with the spread signature stuff.