Boreal Europe

Boreal is an initiative designed to improve the European Union's ability to promote European citizens' Initiatives through the use of participatory processes.

We believe that laws are the most powerful way to create real solutions, and European Citizens' Initiatives (ECIs) are the tool to make them happen. However, Only 9% of ECIs successfully teach the signature threshold within a scenario of unbalanced participation. Over 30-40% of total signatures came from just one nation (e.g., Germany contributing 483,661 signatures to Fur Free Europe). Meanwhile, several EU member states struggle to reach even 10,000 signatures, making it difficult to meet the minimum threshold in at least 7 countries, a key requirement for success.

With our experience leading and collecting over 700,000 signatures for the Extraordinary Regularization of Immigrants in Spain, we saw firsthand that the involvement of over 900 Civil Society Organizations (CSOs)—from local to transnational levels— was crucial to success.

Now, we want our solution to become the go-to solution every time an ECI faces the challenge of the signature collection phase. We have designed a participatory process based in online and offline events to enhance the way ECIs are launched, promoted, and supported across Europe.