Tony Venables — Introductory remarks to the ECIT Summer School, Brussels, 31 August

Introduction

The European Citizens’ Initiative “All on Board” sets out to convert European civic education, mobility, and the mutual recognition of qualifications into a right available to all. That which has so far been a privilege of a specific crowd, should finally turn into a right for all. The formulation echoes Ursula von der Leyen’s early pledge of a Europe that “leaves no one behind.” In an increasingly hostile and unpredictable international environment, an all-of-society approach has moved from being merely desirable to being essential.

A first institutional step was taken in July, when the European Commission agreed to register the initiative, accepting that Article 25 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union provides a valid legal basis for a new European right of this kind. Article 25 requires unanimous agreement among the twenty-seven member states, which is no small hurdle. However, the introduction of any new right has never been straightforward. Citizenship, whatever its jurisdiction, rests on three pillars: rights, participation, and belonging – a shared sense of being “in the same boat”. That sense of common purpose is precisely what a European citizenship still needs to acquire. Union citizenship itself was an evolutionary invention of the Treaty of Maastricht in 1993, conceived in the optimistic aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall. In today’s far more fraught climate, adding a genuinely new right to that citizenship demands a place on the agenda.

Strategic approach to the ECI Paradox

The campaign of the ECI is now moving toward its launch. Organisers will have twelve months to collect more than one million signatures, with minimum thresholds to be met in at least seven member states. The accompanying strategy paper envisages a youth-led movement, built around a different theme and audience each quarter of the year.

This is deliberately not a single-issue initiative but one aimed at systemic change, addressing a wide and varied range of stakeholders. Its organisers are building a coalition capable of expressing a single general aim in multiple languages, grounded in facts and figures relevant to different national and local publics. That is a considerable challenge on which the input of practitioners across Europe is actively sought. The underlying paradox of the ECI as an instrument is that it is inherently transnational in conception yet has to be campaigned for nationally. Framing the aim broadly, as an effective right of access to Europe, is intended to give partners the latitude to adapt the campaign to their own audiences, provided the initiative’s common purpose and identity are respected.

Different constituencies are expected to find different entry points. Teachers, in schools, universities, training bodies, and civil society organisations, may see in the initiative an opportunity to raise the profile of civic education, closing the gap between widely recognised need – on issues from artificial intelligence to the environment, peace, and democracy – and the current absence of clear political responses. Others will point out that mobility targets for vocational and technical training remain far below those for academic study, and that young people who have already benefited from Erasmus+ and similar programmes want those same advantages extended to everyone; the impact of opportunity tends to be greatest precisely where it is least common. Still others may see scope to extend existing programmes or to build a new Erasmus-style scheme around a particular group or theme. The business community might read a universal right as the foundation for a genuine EU-wide internal market in jobs and skills – an aim not necessarily at odds with those who see the initiative chiefly as a defence of European democratic values. In short: let a thousand flowers bloom, in pursuit of one million signatures.

Why Incremental Progress Is Not Enough

It might be argued that existing policies should simply be left to develop and expand on their own. Erasmus, after all, has been a genuine success. Yet it still reaches primarily a relatively privileged minority: those with the financial resources, language skills, and institutional connections to make use of it. The formal commitment to diversity and non-discrimination is still notwithstanding in this context. Mobility opportunities have gradually extended to schools and adult learners, and the new multiannual financial framework consolidates programmes intended to reach a broader population.

The risk is that EU institutions grow comfortable with this status quo, mistaking a partial reach for a comprehensive one, while ceding ground to anti-European forces. Combined with budgetary constraints, an approach with the theoretical potential to reach the whole of society is unlikely to do so within any realistic timeframe. Nor is it obvious that incremental progress can be relied upon when there is active pressure to reverse it, including in areas, such as rights protection and environmental legislation, long considered settled achievements.

The ECI proposes to accelerate this process by placing binding obligations on EU and national authorities. Sceptics might say it is already too late; that Euroscepticism and narrow nationalism have taken root too deeply. That may not yet be irrevocable, but the flowers, as it were, need a greenhouse.

The Case for the Initiative

Three arguments, of varying weight depending on context and audience, support the initiative’s general aim.

A genuinely diverse Europe. Gender equality and non-discrimination are, rightly, well supported across EU institutions, stakeholders, and civil society, with some success. However, there can be no true diversity while European programmes reach only a third of the population. Eurobarometer polling and analyses of European election results consistently show that support for the EU correlates with higher education and socio-economic advantage, and is concentrated in urban areas, at the expense of those on lower incomes, in remote rural areas, or belonging to hard-to-reach minorities. Any credible diversity policy must bridge these divides, reaching in particular those exposed to multiple, overlapping forms of disadvantage; young people not in education, employment, or training are one growing concern among several.

Creating a European public sphere. Those who have worked in consumer or citizens’ organisations know well the absence of a genuine European public sphere, except in the rare instances of a spectacular, coordinated cross-border campaign. The issue has been picked up by European citizens’ assemblies and the citizen-led Conference on the future of Europe. Every citizens’ panel organised by the European Commission after the Conference on the future of Europe called for more European civic education. The Democratic Odyssey process produced a charter calling for citizen participation “to become known to everyone” and for an Erasmus-style scheme dedicated to participation itself. A right for all would help overcome a structural obstacle: European participatory democracy cannot function with too few participants and too little public attention.

Countering nationalist and anti-immigration narratives. The absence of an all-of-society approach leaves space open for rival initiatives, such as a proposed “Save Europe Act,” which the Commission has in fact refused to register, and which calls for a moratorium on non-Western immigration, “remigration,” and a return to internal EU borders. That initiative, still collecting signatures, is endorsed by Viktor Orbán and other prominent figures on the political right. Its existence is itself an argument against complacency: incremental, step-by-step progress is no longer sufficient, and a more determined approach is now genuinely urgent.

Is It Feasible?

The organisers have submitted the initiative together with a draft regulation, prepared pro bono with the support of Paul Weiss, and are now working on an implementing text to be published at their annual conference on 3 December. Several considerations support the claim that the proposal is workable.

1. First, the right envisaged is not an automatic entitlement but, like other European rights, would be subject to conditions; many will not take it up, but even those who do not may value knowing the opportunity exists, and those who do will need to make the case for their own participation. Out of the two decades of education, three to six months can be devoted to European learning mobility.
2. Second, implementation would follow extensive prior consultation with stakeholders, citizens’ assemblies, and pilot projects in a representative sample of regions. A transitional period would then be necessary to adapt or build the necessary delivery systems.
3. Third, supporting measures, such as a Statute on European Citizenship and a dedicated centre of excellence for teacher training, are recommended to raise awareness of European rights and help member states integrate a European dimension into civic education, with the detail left to national discretion but subject to regular monitoring.
4. Fourth, the proposal is workable precisely because Erasmus has already proven the underlying delivery mechanisms; Europe already has a dense network of resource centres geared to international exchange, though additional human resources would be needed to support citizens exercising the new right.
5. Fifth, converting a privilege into a right creates a new market, opening space for commercial and social-economy actors to invest in cross-border services; there is no reason to assume the entire cost should fall on the EU budget alone, though Erasmus’s current 2% budget share would need to grow.
6. Sixth, a demand-led approach need not produce a single model: choice should range from physical mobility to hybrid formats to participation in a European project without leaving one’s own country. 
7. Seventh, implementation would generate a substantial body of representative data on what does and does not work from a citizen’s and a local perspective. This a tool the Commission could use both to enforce existing EU legislation and to identify barriers still to be removed in the internal market, in support of policies such as cohesion funding.
8. Eighth, there is value in sharing this experience with countries beyond the EU and with other international organisations, as the initiative proposes – a natural extension of existing practice rather than a departure from it.

Conclusion

Beyond these practical arguments lies something less tangible but more fundamental: trust. Granting every citizen and resident a European right, understood almost as a form of contract, would itself be an act of trust on the part of the EU. Trust extended tends to be trust returned and from it, a shared hope and vision for Europe’s future can emerge.