Public consultations
Home » European Union »
Participate in the development of European policies
The European Commission wants to include all European citizens in the EU legislative process. Therefore, if you are a European citizen and would like to express your views on the design of Community legislation, you can contribute to the open public consultations or comment on the European Commission’s initiatives during the policy-making phase through the Tell us what you think portal.
Tell us what you think is a Commission portal where all citizens can share their views on new EU policies and existing legislation.
The European Commission wants to draft legislative and policy proposals on an empirical and high quality basis and maintain an open and transparent attitude in the process. It therefore promotes that European citizens contribute to the development of Community policies, as part of the EU’s democratization process.
The Commission is always open to hearing your opinion and pays attention to your contributions when drafting legislative proposals, and is even interested in gathering your views on current legislation.
Public consultation process
Script sheet
When the European Commission prepares to draft a legislative initiative or to amend existing legislation, it initially draws up a roadmap outlining the context of the draft legislation and giving citizens 4 weeks to comment. Citizens can contribute in any of the 24 official languages of the EU by submitting their comments online.
Comment analysis
The Commission will analyze the comments sent by European citizens and make a summary of the contributions and comments received. It will then study how these ideas can be transformed into more concrete policy options, and finally present those options to public consultation.
Public consultation
The public consultation is an online questionnaire that is usually available for 12 weeks. At this stage, citizens can participate in the public consultation to give their opinion on the options presented by the Commission.
Legislative proposal
Based on the opinions received, the Commission will draw up a legislative proposal that responds to the real needs of the citizens. This proposal will be sent to the European co-legislators, the European Parliament and the Council, which are responsible for debating and approving the legislation.
Comments phase
In addition, once the legislative proposal has been drafted, it is again made available to citizens to send their comments with a time limit of 8 weeks. Subsequently, all the opinions collected will be sent to the European Parliament and the Council for consideration when doing legislative work.
Ready for the future
In addition to public consultations, the European Commission also has the Ready for the Future portal in which you can suggest improvements to existing legislation to simplify EU legislation, reduce its administrative burden and increase its potential for digitization. All this with the aim of making Community legislation more efficient and better adapted to the future.
This platform allows you to send your suggestions throughout the year (i.e., they are not limited to a time frame as is the case with public consultations).