Why can Trump propose EU legislation and the Parliament can't?

LinkedIn blog post, 10/11/2025, by Sven Franck (en français , in Deutsch)

While we all celebrated the stellar campaign of Mamdani another successful campaign in Europe was flying mostly under the radar: Not our petition to remove a road from the Ljubljana spatial planning for the photo. I'm talking about the European Citizen Initiative (ECI) "My voice My choice" led by Slovenian Institute 8th of March demanding safe and accessible abortion which last week passed the first vote in the European Parliament.

That was one in a million?

This is no small feat, because only ECIs that collect one million signatures in at least 7 countries over 12 months make it onto the desk of the European Commission, and if accepted, into the legislative funnel which will next see a vote in the plenary on December 6th before the Commission will decide whether to introduce corresponding legislation.

Only a handful of initiatives make it this far, a pity, considering that citizens could use this tool to actively influence the political agenda of European Institutions. Alberto Alemanno rightfully argues, that ECIs are a unique transnational feature that is underutilized. Imagine the Commission not having to deal with one or two successful ECIs per year, but with 20, 30 or more. It would go from being the "Secretary of the Council" to becoming the "Secretary of the people", legally obligated to take into consideration ECIs that pass the signature threshold.

Legal initiative? European Parliament:⛔ Trump:✅

Look at it from another angle: the European Parliament is the only parliament in the world without the right to propose legislation. If you see the effort MyVoice MyChoice makes to convince parliamentarians to back their proposal, why not combine the two and have MEPs or even groups steward ECIs? Or, if you're a transnational movement with MEPs and a joint agenda and structure across all member states, like Volt Europa, why not run your own ECIs as "makeshift" solution to legal initiative?

Because, let's be honest, the European Parliament sits at the bottom of the legislative food chain. It's the equivalent of salt and pepper at your restaurant table. And the food coming out of the Commission is bad. Ideally, the Commission is a counter-weight to national interests and drives the European project. Today it is the opposite - cramming national and even foreign interests into omnibus legislation to dismantle the regulatory body it built over decades.

We should not accept that Donald Trump has more influence than our own Parliament on the legislative agenda. We can feel good by signing petition on change.org. What we really should do is flood the European Commission with legally sound ECIs to start forcing the legislative agenda away from foreign and national interests. After all, the people are the sovereign in a democracy. Let's make our voices heard. With #jumpstartEU.