People's Assembly supports introducing popular initiative into law

Photo: Liis Treimann

Participants in the day of deliberation of the Estonian crowdsourcing initiative Rahvakogu (People's Assembly) who gathered at the song festival ground in Tallinn on Saturday to discuss the hundreds of proposals collected at the beginning of the year, supported introducing citizens' initiative into law but did not consider it necessary to transform the Rahvakogu into a permanent institution.

The proposal to regulate by law citizens' possibility to take part in different phases of developing laws received 237 votes for and 44 votes against.

The idea for the Rahvakogu to continue as a volunteer initiative was backed by 174 members of the public selected for Saturday's debate. Seventy people were in favor of making the assembly a permanent institution to collect and ponder ideas on various topics and present them to parliament.

The proposal that found the most favor with Rahvakogu participants was to make it mandatory for parliament to discuss a popular initiative backed by a certain number of people, for example 25,000 franchised citizens. The proposal was supported by 226 and opposed by 12 participants.

The proposal to ease putting bills and national issues to a referendum collected 184 votes for and 54 against.

Of the nearly 500 registered participants around 300 turned up for the day of deliberation.