Between 10 September and 23 September we handed in  nearly 1.9 million signatures, marking the first successful European Citizens’ Initiative: “Water is a human right!”.

With these signatures we are calling on the European Commission to “implement the human right to water and sanitation in European legislation”.
Many kinds of  events have been organized to celebrate the success of this ECI. See the pictures at: http://www.right2water.eu/gallery/handing-signatures-national-authorities-each-country-10-13-september-2013.

National authorities now have three months to validate the signatures received in each of the 28 EU countries. We then intend to formally submit the European Citizens Initiative on 10 December, International Human Rights’ Day. So far 4 countries have finished the validation process. These are Spain, Luxembourg, Latvia and Bulgaria. In Spain and Luxembourg we have now officially passed the minimum threshold. The number of valid signatures varies between 88% and 95% of the total handed in.

The next stage in this campaign is to continue to put political pressure on the European Parliament, the European Commission and the Council of the European Union. We are preparing the hearing that will be organized in the European Parliament in which we will explain our proposals. We expect this hearing to take place in January or February 2014.