MORE THAN 1.2 million signatures have been collected by a pro-choice campaign calling on the European Commission (EC) to propose financing “safe and legal abortion”. 

The My Voice, My Choice campaign started collecting signatures exactly a year ago and today is the last day that people can add their support. 

This is a European Citizens’ Initiative, which, if over one million are collected, requires the EC to officially reply to the petition, outlining its legal and political conclusions as well as any actions it will take in response. 

The campaign aims to “make women’s lives freer, safer, and better; wherever they live in our union”.

Veronika Povž, communication director of the campaign said that “those with enough money can travel for an abortion — there’s always a way for them”.

But it’s the marginalised groups and those who can’t afford it who suffer the most.

Instead of interfering with laws and regulations of Member States, the initiative instead asks the Commission:

“To submit a proposal for financial support to Member States that would be able to perform safe termination of pregnancies, in accordance with their domestic law, for anyone in Europe who still lacks access to safe and legal abortion.”

It proposes that this would be a voluntary “opt-in mechanism” for each country.

Effectively, that means that support would be provided in countries with more liberal abortion access to enable them to provide care for women travelling from areas with more restrictive laws.

Thousands of women continue to travel to access care, as reported by The Journal Investigates earlier this month in our Exporting Abortion investigation. 

We revealed that over 5,000 women in Europe travel from their home countries across borders for abortions each year.   

Few successful citizens’ campaigns 

More than a decade after the creation of the European Citizens’ Initiative, the EU’s common petitioning system, it is clear that gathering a million signatures for or against a cause is a major challenge.

To reach this high bar requires a lot of campaigning and funding.

Each country has set thresholds for signature number, dependent on population size, and campaigns must get support from at least seven EU countries to be considered.

For this pro-choice initiative, 19 out of the 27 Member States were over their set threshold. That included over 12,500 people from Ireland, far more than the 9,165 threshold. 

The highest number of signatures per population came from Slovenia (over 65,000) where the campaign started. Over 200,000 signed the initiative in France, with over 150,000 from Germany and Italy.

Bulgaria, Luxembourg and Lithuania had the lowest proportion of signatures.  

Significant funding was required to get over the line. My Voice, My Choice declared over €830,000 in sponsorship since February last year.

However, though this particular campaign has successfully collected the required signatures, it is only the 11th European Citizens’ Initiative to do so since it started 13 years ago.

In that time, 95 initiatives have failed — 68 failed to obtain the required signatures and 27 were withdrawn by their initiators — out of a total of 119 accepted by the European Commission to collect signatures.

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'I'll never forgive my country': Women on the trauma of having to travel to UK for terminations

'The most vulnerable are still being exported': Why and how women have to travel for abortions

Over 5,000 women in Europe have to travel abroad for abortions each year

Signatures to be verified 

The pro-choice campaign is not done yet as the next step once the signature collection closes later today is verification. 

A Commission spokesperson told us that “Member States will have 3 months to perform the verification” of the statements of support. 

Once that is done, and there are at least one million signatures remaining, then My Voice, My Choice can submit it to the EC for examination. The Commission then has six months to officially reply. The spokesperson said:

“Where the Commission intends to take action in response to the initiative, including, where appropriate, the adoption of one or more proposals for a legal act of the Union, the Communication shall also set out the envisaged timeline for these actions.”

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Maria Delaney is the editor of The Journal Investigates.

This article was produced in the framework of the PULSE cross-border journalistic cooperation project. It was developed with György Folk, Brussels (EUrologus) and Viktória Serdült (HVG) Budapest.

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