Carsten Berg | Campaigner in “Save the Bees and Farmers” ECI and Co-Founder of “The ECI Campaign”
Interview given to Ms Maria Louisa Vafiadaki
What is the the ECI and in how far have you contributed to the emergence of this democratic innovation?
The European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) is the world’s first and only instrument of transnational participatory democracy. Under this new right of citizen participation, 1 million citizens from at least 7 EU countries can oblige the European Commission to deal with a legislative proposal and thus determine the political agenda of the EU.
20 years ago, together with my colleagues, I successfully campaigned for its inclusion in EU primary law during the European Constitutional Convention in 2002/2003. Today we advise and help people who want to start ECIs which always turns out to be a highly challenging endeavor. We are doing this as a non-partisan and non-profit organization which largely is recruited from former organizers of successful ECIs, ECI researchers and pro-democracy activists. I myself for example have been co-organizing the most recent successful ECI Save Bees and Farmers while I am also researcher on the subject of transnational participatory democracy at the European University Institute in Florence but most of all I am a democracy activist.
How does the ECI empower European citizens to establish change?
The first successful initiative "Water is a Human Right", for example, was able to stop further privatisation of water services in Europe thanks to the support of almost 2 million citizens who raised their voices and created such strong public political pressure that it could no longer be ignored by decision-makers.
Ideally, strong European movements can emerge thanks to successful ECIs influencing political decisions in a public and transparent way – very much in contrast to the many powerful and extremely well-resourced lobbyists of multinational corporations and special interests in Brussels. In our view, the ECI is only a first step towards a more directly legitimised and accountable EU, steered primarily by citizens rather than lobbyists. The experience with the ECI shows us that we now need even more powerful and binding instruments of participatory and deliberative democracy. For this purpose, we need a new European Constitutional Convention to change the EU-primary law, the EU-Treaties.
Why does your ECI movement focus specifically on bees?
The protection of bee stands for the protection of the entire biodiversity, which we desperately need to survive on this planet. To this end we demand the phase-out of synthetically pesticides by 2035 in European agricultural industry. Synthetic pesticides are highly toxic – they are not only killing bees but also butterflies and other pollinators as well as plants and microorganisms. Moreover, such pesticides endanger our human health, especially the health of farmers. Pesticides are a major factor in the global extinction of species and biodiversity loss. With this ECI we demand to start working with nature and living biological systems of which we are part of instead of destroying them.
Our goal is to not only to reduce synthetic pesticides but also to support small and medium-scale farmers in this transition phase. We have identified that the problem of biodiversity loss and the extreme loss of farms have the same root. The extinction of species and farms is mainly due to the current model of industrial agriculture, which is characterized by highly harmful monocultures and the large-scale use of synthetic pesticides. In the past years over 300 billion euros, or almost 40 percent of the European Union's total budget, flow into the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
However, it is mainly large farms that benefit from all this money as subsidies are made dependent on the size of the farmer’s land. In the first instance, it is not the ecological quality of the agricultural work that is used as a basis for subsidy calculation, but only the size of the area cultivated by a farm. Accordingly, industrially oriented farms receive the most support by the EU on a flat-rate basis. Rural and organic farms, which per se ensure structural and species diversity through their crop rotations, are massively disadvantaged. This explains, among other things, why the number of farmers has dramatically fallen by 25% across Europe in recent years. In average 800 farms are being closed a day in the EU. According to Eurostat, more than 5 million farms, predominantly small farms, closed down in the last years.
The bees ECI is unique because it is holistic with concrete targets addressing both sides of the problem: the protection of biodiversity and the support of farmers in the transition towards ecological farming.
Are there any stakeholders organisations supporting your cause?
Our ECI is supported by over 140 environmental NGOs, farmer and beekeeper organisations, charitable foundations and scientific institutions distributed throughout the European Union, working together to reconcile agriculture, health and biodiversity.
In particular we bring together the many citizen movements across the EU which have emerged to oppose pesticides. Fore example 1.7 million citizens signed a regional citizens’ initiative to save bees in Bavaria; there are regular “Stop pesticides” protests in Italy, France and other countries. It is equally important to remember the much-debated successful local referendum organised in the South Tyrol village of Mals to ban pesticides. South Tyrol is the largest apple growing region in Europe with an extremely high use of toxic pesticides poisoning not only the soil but also the air due to massive spraying of apple trees leading to air drifts. In consequence pesticides are blown everywhere by the wind, even into residential areas. Many of the citizens of Mals were no longer willing to accept this. In consequnce citizens initiated a referendum in which 76% of the population opted for a banning pesticides.
How can one be part of the ECI and support it ? (i.e. volunteering, donations etc)
One can donate on our website. Obviously, without this NGO alliance, many individual volunteers and financial supporters we couldn’t have made this ECI successful. The ECI is now completed and we have reached 1.000.000 signatures! On the 14th of January 2023 we had our hearing with the European Parliament and in April we will have final feedback. Then the EU Commission will decide how to respond to our ECI Save Bees and Farmers.
Links to Videos:
ECI Campaign: www.citizens-initiative.eu/about-us/
ECI Bees and Farmers: www.savebeesandfarmers.eu/eng/
EU Commission Website: www.europa.eu/citizens-initiative/_en