EU citizens have an important, though little-known, tool for making their voices heard: the European Citizens' Initiative (ECI). An ECI is essentially a super-charged petition. If at least 1 million people from 7 countries sign it within 12 months, the European Commission is obligated to respond (though not necessarily to enact policy around it). "It is unique from a global perspective," comments Carsten Berg, the director of the ECI Campaign, an NGO.
ECIs are powerful not just as a method of participating in policy, but as a method that crosses borders. "Democracy needs to be transnationalized in order to address the real challenges," Berg argues.
ECIs have been a particular tool for mobilizing support around animal welfare. Most of the ECIs with responses from the European Commission have been related to the wellbeing of animals in some capacity. Berg believes that while many EU policy areas can feel dry and abstract, ECIs related to improving animals' lives are "very specific, emotionally tangible subjects" that citizens can rally around.
Messaging about cages has been hugely powerful for cutting through some of the many complexities around animal welfare, comments Christine Nicol, a professor of animal welfare at the Royal Veterinary College in London. As a teenager, she herself was moved by seeing horrific photos of chickens crammed into battery cages. These images are visceral. While there's no single definition of a cage, she says that "most people would take a cage as an enclosure that a human can't enter," which highly restricts an animal's movement. Cage-free systems can be indoor or outdoor, and both the European public and many food companies have expressed support for going cage-free.
A particularly successful example of mobilization around caging is the ECI "End the Cage Age," which was registered in 2018. The EU already has partial cage bans, including a 2012 prohibition of the caging of laying hens during egg production, which drew on Nicol's work. The End the Cage Age ECI called to extend and formalize the patchwork of policies around caging, to prohibit cages for many types of animals, across the union. This encompassed crates for pregnant pigs, individual pens for calves, and cages for rabbits and a number of birds (quails, ducks, geese, and several types of chickens).
"We knew that it was a big endeavor," says Annamaria Pisapia, the head of Compassion in World Farming Italy. She was part of the effort from the start, as a member of the Citizens' Committee of the End the Cage Age ECI. This group began laying the groundwork for the initiative all the way back in 2016. What encouraged her throughout the long process was seeing how much people cared about this issue.
A whopping 170 NGOs were involved, led by Compassion in World Farming. Pisapia calls this "the biggest campaign ever done in Europe for farm animals." It took a lot of campaigning, celebrity endorsements, and people on the streets collecting signatures.
In general, Berg emphasizes that there is an enormous amount of planning, fundraising, and alliance-building involved to overcome the cultural and linguistic barriers to a pan-EU campaign of this nature. This requires patience; he advises organizations to prepare for at least a year before they actually launch their ECI.
And they have to be prepared for failure. While 133 ECIs have been submitted since the advent of the system in 2012, only ten have collected enough signatures. Of those ten, only two have been partially implemented.
End the Cage Age broke through the tough thresholds: about 1.4 million EU citizens signed. There was particular support, proportional to population size, from the Netherlands and Germany, two countries with strong animal-welfare movements (though also strong farming cultures).
The stakes are high, as are the sensitivities. "There is no life worth living for an animal in a cage," Pisapia stresses. At the same time, "We know that farmers need time to change. We want farmers to be supportive. We don't want to put farmers out of business." She recognizes the need to compensate farmers, alongside the need to assure that farm animals have lives worth living, and the need to implement the will of citizens.
Despite the outpouring of support from across the EU, there has been plenty of talk yet little action on the ECI. In 2021, the (elected) European Parliament voted to support it. The (executive) European Commission also agreed to revise the cage-related legislation by 2023, with a view to implementing the changes by 2027. These were to include financial support and training for farmers to gradually transition away from cages, as well as rules for imports. "It was an amazing day," Pisapia remembers of this first-ever public commitment to implement an ECI. But 2022 came and went, then 2023, without any action.
There had already been a delay because of the Covid-19 pandemic; normally the European Commission is supposed to respond within six months of a successful ECI. In October 2023, when it was clear that further delay was likely, civil society organizations issued an open letter calling on the European Commission to stick to its commitment. In January 2024, the European commissioner responsible for health and food safety responded by referring to unrelated proposals on animal welfare, and saying that preparations to phase out cages were continuing.
Frustrated, campaigners took the landmark decision to sue the European Commission in the EU's highest court. In April 2024, the Citizens' Committee of the End the Cage Age ECI brought a legal case to the Court of Justice of the European Union: a first for an ECI. Several months later, the ECI Campaign, Eurogroup for Animals, Foodwatch International, and Animal Equality sought to join the lawsuit. They're still waiting for a response from the court. (A court spokesperson stated, "no official date for the hearing has been set.")
Berg calls the European Commission's inaction disrespectful and scandalous. This is bigger than a single initiative, he believes; trust in democratic institutions is at stake. "If there's no follow up to a successful ECI, the ECI will not have a future," he warns. "We run the risk that citizens reject the European Union in the long term."
As the European Commission dawdled, and as farmer protests shook up EU politics, agricultural lobby groups continued to lobby aggressively against animal welfare protections. For instance, the nonprofit newsroom Lighthouse Reports found that between 2021 and 2023, partners of the group European Livestock Voice repeatedly urged the Commission's Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety not to curb caged farming. (European Livestock Voice commented that it was not aware of this.)
These organizations also cast doubt on the work of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), the independent EU agency providing scientific advice on food-related risks. EFSA maintains that caging has severe consequences for animal welfare, such as restricting laying hens' movement, keeping them from doing what comes naturally to them, and unduly stressing them. The agency recommends that hens be housed outside of cages.
Professor Nicol is one of the experts who participated in EFSA's Scientific Panel on Animal Health and Animal Welfare in 2022. This body produced scientific opinions on laying hens and other farm animals following the End the Cage ECI.
Nicol says that soon after this scientific opinion was submitted, amidst the ramifications of the Russia-Ukraine war, "suddenly oil prices were going up and everyone was talking about cost of living instead of talking about welfare. And the industry bodies themselves then took that chance and very, very effectively lobbied and said this is the last thing you want to do because it's going to further increase costs for EU consumers." Nicol worried that this year-long piece of work would go to waste.
Nicol stresses that the 188-page scientific opinion drew on the best available evidence, which the team was instructed to summarize scientifically, rather than formulating realistic plans for the agriculture industry. This could have been communicated better, she acknowledges. Still, she says it's clear that there are well-designed, humane, and affordable alternatives to cages. "If you were going to invest in a new system, I think it would actually be cheaper to install an alternative system than a cage system," given the lower material cost of group housing.
For instance, it has been estimated that for rabbits farmed for meat, investment in cage-free systems would be half the cost compared to caged systems. Going cage-free would of course be good for rabbits, giving them enough space to stretch, stand, and hop. But the extra space would also benefit for farm workers, making it easier for them to observe and handle rabbits.
Another incentive, Nicol says, is that "generally the mortality is lower in in the alternative systems."
One thing that makes Nicol hopeful is the Strategic Dialogue on the Future of EU Agriculture. This consultative group, consisting of 29 organizations spanning the agriculture industry and NGOs, was convened by the EU with the aim of coming to an agreement about the direction of agriculture in the region. In September 2024, the Strategic Dialogue group issued its report, which recommended that the European Commission come up with an animal welfare proposal by 2026, and explicitly mentioned a phase-out of cages. Some observers are heartened that such a varied set of interests could find common ground. However, others see this as yet another delay tactic.
The new crop of EU commissioners, who took up their roles in December, haven't inspired confidence among ECI watchers. Maroš Šefčovič has a jumble of responsibilities, with a remit that includes trade and economic security, as well as interinstitutional relations and transparency. The ECI Campaign notes that Šefčovič's mission letter doesn't even mention the ECI.
A more controversial figure is Olivér Várhelyi, the commissioner for health and animal welfare. In heated questioning by European parliamentarians considering whether to confirm his nomination, he acknowledged that "cages are becoming obsolete" and committed to following up on the End the Cage Age ECI. However, he has refused to give a timeline for this, and continues to stress farmers' wellbeing, despite this not being part of his remit. He has also called for yet more discussion of how to implement the ECI. The risk is of continuous delay via further cycles of consultation. (Várhelyi and the European Commission did not respond to a request for comment.)
While many people remain hopeful that the ECI will be implemented eventually, the wait is painful. A phaseout of cages by 2027, an initial target, is now unlikely. Campaigners have to find the patience to match the institutional procrastination. "It's a very, very long process," Berg says of ECIs in general. "Citizens want to see that governments deliver efficiently and are responsive."