On 11 December the European Commission gave its green light to start a new European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) in favour of marriage and family called Mum, Dad & Kids. The initiative asks the European Commission to respect the principle of subsidiarity as regards EU Member States’ own definitions of marriage and family. It also asks the European Commission to introduce a horizontally applicable regulation that defines the meaning of marriage and family for EU law, when needed, as follows: marriage is a union between a man and a woman, and family is based on marriage and/or descent.
This initiative refers to the current situation of EU law where different definitions are used for marriage and family in EU regulations. The ECI suggests to introduce a definition of marriage and family based on the smallest common denominator among the Member States, i.e. marriage between one man and one woman is an applicable definition in all Member States, although some have introduced a wider interpretation which is their national competence.
The registration of the ECI means that signatures can be collected to support the request to the European Commission. To meet the requirements at least one million signatures are needed but as previous ECI’s such as One of Us and Right 2 Water have shown the one million threshold can easily be reached and overpassed.
The collection of signatures will soon start, to know more about it and to support the ECI a website is available: mumdadandkids.eu
