Right2Water is a campaign to commit the European Union and member states to implement the human right to water and sanitation. [1]
It has three stated goals:
The European Citizens' Initiative (ECI) represented more than 120 NGO and was supported by the German and Austrian trade unions. [2] The backbone of the ECI was the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU) whose President Anne-Marie Perret was also the president of the citizens Committee. [3] On 21 March 2013, it became the first ECI to collect more than a million signatures and they reached the minimum quota of signatures in seven countries on 7 May 2013. It stopped the signature collection on 7 September 2013, with a total of 1,857,605 signatures. The initiative was submitted to the European Commission in December 2013 and the public hearing took place on 17 February 2014 at the European Parliament. [4] In March 2014, the commission has adopted the Communication in response to the Right2Water initiative. [5] On 1 July 2015 the Roadmap for the evaluation of the Drinking Water Directive has been published by the European Commission. [6]
In response, the European Parliament criticised the commission for failing the meet the initiative's demands. [7] The report by Sinn Féin MEP Lynn Boylan called on the Commission "to recognise that affordable access to water is a basic human right." [8]
In 2010, three years before the petition, Paris was the first European local entity to have concluded the remunicipalization process of water and sanitation, entrusted to Eau de Paris. [9]
From 2010 until 2022 many other cities and regions have declared its support to the human right to water (like Slovenia [10] and Andalucia [11] ) many remunicipalisations also have taken place. [12]
On 19 March 2014 the commission partly meet the proposals. The commission included the following: [13]
On 1 February 2018 Karmanu vella and Frans Timmermans announced the revision of the Drinking water Directive 'because this is a topic which is close to Europeans' hearts. Water was the subject of the first ever successful European Citizens' Initiative, with over 1.6 million people supporting the Right2Water Initiative before it was submitted to the Commission. [14] EPSU the main organiser of the ECI reacted saying that "the European Commission missed an opportunity to implemented the human right to water". [15] On 16 December 2020, the European Parliament formally adopted the revised Drinking Water Directive. The Directive will enter in force on 12 January 2021, and Member States will have two years to transpose it into national legislation. [16]
The European Parliament (EP) is one of the legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union, it adopts European legislation, following a proposal by the European Commission. The Parliament is composed of 705 members (MEPs). It represents the second-largest democratic electorate in the world, with an electorate of 375 million eligible voters in 2009.
A popular initiative is a form of direct democracy by which a petition meeting certain hurdles can force a legal procedure on a proposition. The hurdles the petition has to meet vary between countries, typically signatures by a certain number of registered voters. In direct initiative, the proposition is put directly to a plebiscite or referendum, also called a Popular initiated Referendum or citizen-initiated referendum. In an indirect initiative, the proposed measure is first referred to the legislature, and then if the proposed law is rejected by the legislature, the government may be forced to put the proposition to a referendum. The proposition may be on federal level law, statute, constitutional amendment, charter amendment, local ordinance, obligate the executive or legislature to consider the subject by submitting it to the order of the day. In contrast, a popular referendum that allows voters only to repeal existing legislation.
The European Ombudsman is an inter-institutional body of the European Union that holds the institutions, bodies and agencies of the EU to account, and promotes good administration. The Ombudsman helps people, businesses and organisations facing problems with the EU administration by investigating complaints, as well as by proactively looking into broader systemic issues. The current Ombudsman is Emily O'Reilly.
Christopher Graham Davies is a Liberal Democrat politician in the United Kingdom. He was a Member of Parliament for Littleborough and Saddleworth from 1995 to 1997. He served as a Member of the European Parliament for North West England from 1999 to 2014 and from 2019 to 2020.
Claude Ajit Moraes is a British Labour Party politician and campaigner, who was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for London between 1999 and the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the EU on 31 January 2020. He was Chair of the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee, Deputy Leader of the European Parliamentary Labour Party and Vice-President of the Socialists and Democrats Group in the European Parliament.
Anna Cecilia Malmström is a Swedish politician who served as European Commissioner for Trade from 2014 to 2019. She previously served as European Commissioner for Home Affairs from 2010 to 2014 and Minister for European Union Affairs from 2006 to 2010. She was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Sweden from 1999 to 2006.
European Union citizenship is afforded to all nationals of member states of the European Union (EU). It was formally created with the adoption of the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, at the same time as the creation of the EU. EU citizenship is additional to, as it does not replace, national citizenship. It affords EU citizens with rights, freedoms and legal protections available under EU law.
Public water supply and sanitation in the United Kingdom is characterised by universal access and generally good service quality. A salient feature of the sector in the United Kingdom compared to other developed countries is the diversity of institutional arrangements between the constituting parts of the UK, which are each described in separate articles, while this article is devoted to some common issues across the United Kingdom.
Public water supply and sanitation in Germany is universal and of good quality. Some salient features of the sector compared to other developed countries are its very low per capita water use, the high share of advanced wastewater treatment and very low distribution losses. Responsibility for water supply and sanitation provision lies with municipalities, which are regulated by the states. Professional associations and utility associations play an important role in the sector. As in other EU countries, most of the standards applicable to the sector are set in Brussels. Recent developments include a trend to create commercial public utilities under private law and an effort to modernize the sector, including through more systematic benchmarking.
Water supply and sanitation (WSS) in the European Union (EU) is the responsibility of each member state, but in the 21st century union-wide policies have come into effect. Water resources are limited and supply and sanitation systems are under pressure from urbanisation and climate change. Indeed, the stakes are high as the European Environmental Agency found that one European out of ten already suffers a situation of water scarcity and the IEA measured the energy consumption of the water sector to be equivalent to 3,5% of the electricity consumption of the EU.
The Energy Performance of Buildings Directive is the European Union's main legislative instrument aiming to promote the improvement of the energy performance of buildings within the European Union. It was inspired by the Kyoto Protocol which commits the EU and all its parties by setting binding emission reduction targets.
The Water supply and sanitation services in Portugal have seen important advances in access to services, technologies used and service quality over the past decades (1980s–1990s), partially achieved thanks to important funds from the European Union. Nevertheless, sanitation still remains relatively low in mountain rural areas and some people have their own sources of water controlled by municipalities.
The European Citizens' Initiative (ECI) is a European Union (EU) mechanism aimed at increasing direct democracy by enabling "EU citizens to participate directly in the development of EU policies", introduced with the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007. This popular initiative enables one million citizens of the European Union, who are nationals of at least seven member states, to call directly on the European Commission to propose a legal act in an area where the member states have conferred powers onto the EU level. This right to request the commission to initiate a legislative proposal puts citizens on the same footing as the European Parliament and the European Council, who enjoy this right according to Articles 225 and 241 TFEU, respectively. The commission holds the right of initiative in the EU. The first registered ECI, Fraternité 2020, was initiated on 9 May 2012, although the first submitted ECI was One Single Tariff.
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Lobbying in the European Union, also referred to officially as European interest representation, is the activity of representatives of diverse interest groups or lobbies who attempt to influence the executive and legislative authorities of the European Union through public relations or public affairs work. The Treaty of Lisbon introduced a new dimension of lobbying at the European level that is different from most national lobbying. At the national level, lobbying is more a matter of personal and informal relations between the officials of national authorities, but lobbying at the European Union level is increasingly a part of the political decision-making process and thus part of the legislative process. 'European interest representation' is part of a new participatory democracy within the European Union. The first step towards specialised regulation of lobbying in the European Union was a Written Question tabled by Alman Metten, in 1989. In 1991, Marc Galle, Chairman of the Committee on the Rules of Procedure, the Verification of Credentials and Immunities, was appointed to submit proposals for a Code of conduct and a register of lobbyists. Today lobbying in the European Union is an integral and important part of decision-making in the EU. From year to year lobbying regulation in the EU is constantly improving and the number of lobbyists is increasing.
Right2Water Ireland is a peaceful protest movement campaigning against Irish Water's introduction of water charges in Ireland.
The Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, formally the Directive (EU) 2019/790 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 April 2019 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market and amending Directives 96/9/EC and 2001/29/EC, is a European Union (EU) directive which has been adopted and came into force on 7 June 2019. It is intended to ensure "a well-functioning marketplace for copyright". It extends existing European Union copyright law and is a component of the EU's Digital Single Market project. The Council of the European Union describes their key goals with the Directive as protecting press publications; reducing the "value gap" between the profits made by Internet platforms and by content creators; encouraging collaboration between these two groups, and creating copyright exceptions for text- and data-mining.
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