The idea of a citizens’ initiative is new only in parts of the European Union. In 12 member states, there is already some form of direct democracy tool, albeit only at the level of national lawmaking, not in a transnational form.

So how did the citizens’ initiative make the leap to the European level? The idea is a vestige of the ill-fated constitutional treaty, which was drafted by the Convention on the Future of the EU in 2002-03, but abandoned after being rejected by the French and Dutch in referendum votes.

The convention, it should be remembered, had been charged by the Laeken Declaration with bringing Europe closer to the people. A group of transparency and direct-democracy groups lobbied several members of the convention to include in the constitution that they were drafting a mechanism of direct democracy. Jürgen Meyer, a centre-left member of Germany’s national parliament, and Alain Lamassoure, a French centre-right MEP, were among the convention members receptive to the idea.

What the direct-democracy advocates initially wanted was a right for citizens to petition for a referendum on a legislative proposal. This idea was too radical for most members of the convention, but Meyer pushed for the inclusion of a citizens’ initiative and his plan was adopted in the last week of the convention.

The text proposed suggested that the mechanism would be triggered if “a significant number of citizens, not less than a million, coming from a significant number of member states” submitted a proposal for a law to the European Commission.

This was the outline of the ECI that is about to see the light of day. It survived the ditching of the constitutional treaty in 2007 and re-emerged in the Lisbon treaty.

That treaty says that an initiative can be filed with the Commission “to submit any appropriate proposals on matters where citizens consider that a legal act of the Union is required”. The ECI must be assessed if it has “not less than one million citizens who are nationals of a significant number of member states”.

The treaty set only the outline. A regulation specifying the procedures and conditions for the ECI followed in March 2010. That gave member states until 1 April this year to adapt their national law to the ECI.