June 3 and 4, 2021 saw the organisation of the tenth European Citizens’ Initiative Day, a totally digital event this year. These two days were set up by the European Commission to highlight the actions taken by European citizens on several themes: health, politics, economy, ecology, or artificial intelligence. One of these initiatives, called “Reclaim your face”, aims to ban mass biometric surveillance practices.

An event to promote citizens’ initiatives in Europe

The European Commission has organised the tenth edition of the European Citizens’ Initiative Day (ECI Day) over two days, on 3 and 4 June 2021. This event has existed since 2012 and allows Europeans to make legislative proposals and thus participate in European decision-making thanks to the proximity between citizens and the European Union institutions on this day.

In the framework of the tenth edition of this event, two days were dedicated to citizens’ initiatives:

• The day of 3 June was dedicated to several debates on the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) instrument and focused on key aspects to make the ECI more effective and strengthen participatory democracy at EU level. The programme included workshops for initiative organisers on various topics such as crowdfunding and online campaigning.
• On4 June, the organisers of the current citizens’ initiatives were given the opportunity to speak. There are twelve of them: “Green Garden Roof Tops”, Vaccine and Treatment Rights, Freedom to Share, Start Implementing Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) Across the EU, Voters Without Borders, Stop Finning – Stop the Trade, Save Bees and Farmers, Actions to tackle the Climate Emergency, Fight the Root Causes of Corruption in Europe, Cultivate Scientific Progress, StopGlobalWarming.eu and Reclaim Your Face.

In order for an initiative to ask the European Commission to legislate on an issue across Europe, a petition must be launched and must reach one million signatures, which corresponds to 1 in 446 EU inhabitants.

Focus on Reclaim your face, the citizens’ initiative to ban mass biometric surveillance practices

Biometric data is digital data that uses characteristics of our bodies and behaviour. For example, individuals’ faces can be subjected to facial recognition to make predictions or analyses about them. It is also possible to do this with any other part of the body and even to analyze the voice, the gait, the actions we perform in our daily lives.

The Reclaim Your Face initiative adopts its positioning around the use of biometric data:

“Governments, police forces and companies use recording devices (such as CCTV cameras) and facial recognition software to collect biometric data. This means that they can track our movements using our unique characteristics, which allow for permanent identification. This capturing of every person’s biometric data in public spaces such as streets, parks, train stations, shops or sports facilities in an attempt to record our lives in real time is mass biometric surveillance. It amounts to treating us like walking barcodes.”

The initiative aims to ban mass biometric surveillance. Its founders call on the European Commission to strictly regulate the use of biometric technologies:

• In order to avoid, in their view, any unjustified infringement of fundamental rights
• To put an end to undifferentiated or arbitrarily targeted uses of biometrics that may lead to illegal mass surveillance.
• Whether this is done by private or public institutions.

The ECI set up also asks the European Commission to propose a legal act based on the GDPR, among other things. It should also be noted that this initiative was set up after the drafting of the white paper which, a few months later, made it possible to announce the European Union’s brand new regulation on artificial intelligence. To date, 54,000 people have signed the “Reclaim your face” petition.

Launching your own European Citizens’ Initiative

It is entirely possible for any European citizen to launch their own ECI and thus potentially be selected to speak on the topic of their ECI on ECI Day. Here are the ten steps to follow in order to do so:

1. Preparation of the initiative and constitution of a group of organisers.
2. Registration of the initiative by the commission with free translation into all official EU languages. In case of proposals (partly) outside the competence of the Commission, a revision by the organisers and a partial registration are also possible.
3. Publication on the European Citizens’ Initiative website.
4. Collection of statements of support, on paper and/or online.
5. Verification of the statements of support by the national authorities.
6. Submission of the initiative to the European Commission.
7. Meeting with Commission representatives.
8. Public hearing and evaluation of political support by the European Parliament.
9. Official response from the European Commission.
10. Follow-up by the Commission of the proposed actions.

Currently, the European Commission has received 104 applications for registration. It has officially registered 78 of them, 12 are in progress, and 6 successful initiatives are to be counted.

Translated from Reclaim Your Face : l’initiative citoyenne européenne contre la surveillance des données biométriques