The European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI): when online participatory practices are used to bypass traditional impediments to Pan-European activism

Based on 30 interviews with ECI actors and a two-year participant observation of two Belgian initiative comittees, this paper will describe how a comprehensive analysis of participatory practices steming out of ECI can point out an evolution of the citizens’ relation to citizen participation. To be taken into account, an ECI must gather a million online signatures from at least a quarter of the member states. Success relies on its promoters’ capacity to lead an online campaign throughout the Union : it implies a transformation of political activism that is traditionnaly carried out by activist organisations. With no surprise, intensive use of online social media and other web technologies accentuates practices of people who are already involved in participatory activities (normalisation and reinforcement theory). However, we observe that there is more and more space for cooperative networking (shared web-based platform, mailing list), and that setting up community association networks – and securing their geographical distribution – is made easier. A widening of the actors involved is alo a part of this transformation : ECI’s promoters remain the « usual suspects » when it comes to European participation (as members of organisations) but – to gather a million signatures – they have to target people that turn to be even more « ordinary » citizens than in any other participatory european mechanisms (mobilisation theory). By doing so, they allow some « general public » European debates (water as a human right, universal basic income) to infiltrate.