ICE Save the Bees has collected more than one million signatures

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The European Citizens’ Initiative ‘Save Bees and Farmers’ has collected more than one million signatures. A great success, to which the Italians made a modest contribution.

Saving the bees, toward the finish line

Signature collection ended on 9/30/21. The goal of collecting one million memberships has been far exceeded. This makes the finish line closer, considering that usually some of the signatures are invalidated.

The next stage of formally checking memberships will last for several months. Once the go-ahead is obtained, the European Commission will have to consider the ECI requests and the European Parliament to put them on the agenda.

The demands of European citizens

There are three demands made by European citizens, as we have seen:

1) Initiate the phase-out of pesticides, herbicides, and other agrotoxics with a first milestone for the reduction of 80 percent of environmentally dispersed poisonous molecules by 2030 and an end point in 2035 with the total elimination of the above pesticides.

2) Take more stringent measures to restore biodiversity and design production methods such that agriculture contributes to the promotion of biodiversity.

3) Supporting farmers in this transition. This requires reforming the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), giving priority to small-scale, diversified and sustainable farming structures, expanding organic farming and promoting research on pesticide-free and GMO-free farming.

A victory with few Italians

Although attentive to sustainability in food spending, as shown by Coop and Immagino reports, Italians have participated little in the European Citizens’ Initiative. With less than 43,000 signatures, they reached only 78 percent of the expected membership threshold.

Large participation was instead seen in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, as shown in the table below.

Save bees

Marta Strinati
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Professional journalist since January 1995, he has worked for newspapers (Il Messaggero, Paese Sera, La Stampa) and periodicals (NumeroUno, Il Salvagente). She is the author of journalistic surveys on food, she has published the book "Reading labels to know what we eat".