Campaign for one million signatures in favour of European citizenship for all residents

21/04/05

Around 15 Million people who reside, work and form families in the European Union are excluded from citizenship rights such as the right to vote and stand in elections. A Europe wide petition has been launched to call for a European Citizenship of residence, requiring one Million signatures of individuals and organisations across Europe.

Please click HERE for the petition to extend European citizenship to all residents, regardless of their nationality. To achieve its goal, this petition must collect more than one million signatures from all European Union countries.

To succeed, it is necessary that partners supervise the “One million” petition campaign and collect signatures in each European Union country.

The petition is translated into the different languages of the European Union.

One million signatures for a EUROPEAN CITIZENSHIP OF RESIDENCE

The European Union constitution draft, like previous treaties, stipulates that “people who have the nationality of a member State” hold the European Union citizenship. Today, as yesterday, we find this definition inacceptable because it excludes 15 million extra-European people residing in the European Union from European citizenship.

In case the Constitution is adopted, and according to Art 1-46-4, one million citizens (at least) from several member States can call for an initiative from the Commission. This is the object of the present petition, which aims at gathering more than one million signatures in European countries in order to ask for a new definition of European citizenship :“Any individual who resides on a territory of a member State or who is a national of a member State gains citizenship of the Union”.

Whatever the evolution of the Constitution draft, the collected signatures will be delivered to the Union different Governments, to the European Commission and to the European Parliament.