Due to maintenance operations, the ECI websites to support the different initiatives will temporarily not be available for around 30 minutes on 2nd of October between 08:00 and 18:00 CEST. Apologies in advance for any inconvenience this may cause. Thank you for your understanding.

Today, the European Commission decided to register a European citizens' initiative entitled ‘Ensuring Common Commercial Policy conformity with EU Treaties and compliance with international law’.

The organisers of the initiative call on the Commission to ‘propose legal acts based on the Common Commercial Policy to prevent EU legal entities from both importing products originating in illegal settlements in occupied territories and exporting to such territories, in order to preserve the integrity of the internal market and to not aid or assist the maintenance of such unlawful situations.’

It is important to highlight that the initiative invites the Commission to submit a proposal for a legal act under the Common Commercial Policy, which is general in nature and does not target a specific country or territory.

The Commission has registered a new European citizens' initiative ‘ReturnthePlastics: A Citizen’s Initiative to implement an EU-wide deposit-system to recycle plastic bottles’.

The organisers of the ‘ReturnthePlastics: A Citizen’s Initiative to implement an EU-wide deposit-system to recycle plastic bottles’ initiative call on the Commission to present a proposal to:

• implement an EU-wide deposit-system to recycle plastic bottles,
• incentivise all EU Member States that supermarkets (chains) which are selling plastic bottles install reverse vending machines for recycling the plastic bottles after being purchased and used by the consumer, and
• make the plastic bottle producing companies pay plastic taxes for the recycling and deposit-system of the plastic bottles (under the principle that the polluter should pay).

This is the seventh new initiative that is registered in 2021.