What’s an ECI?

EU citizens have the right to apply directly to the European Commission with a European Citizens’ Initiative in order to propose a concrete legislative amendment. For an initiative to be considered by the Commission, you need to get 1 million people from across the EU to sign it in support.

The specific objectives we introduced to the European Commission, are the following:

Having regard to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and in particular articles 114, 118 and 168 thereof, we ask the European Commission to propose all legislation to

• ensure that intellectual property rights, including patents, do not hamper the accessibility or availability of any future Covid-19 vaccine or treatment;
• ensure that EU-legislation on data and market exclusivity does not limit the immediate effectiveness of compulsory licenses issued by Member States;
• introduce legal obligations for beneficiaries from EU-funds to share COVID-19 health technology related knowledge, intellectual property and/or data in a technology or patent pool;
•  introduce legal obligations for beneficiaries from EU-funds regarding transparency on public contributions, production costs, as well as accessibility and affordability clauses combined with non-exclusive licenses.