Nearly two million people—1,891,406, almost twice the million required by law for the acceptance of petitions to the European institutions—joined the campaign “ONE OF US” for the collection of signatures that just ended (on November 1st, 2013) in 20 countries of the European Union—the minimum number was 7—, representing 77% of the European population, to present a proposal for reform of the law in order to defend human life from the earliest stages of its development, by recognizing that the embryo has the legal status of a human person, and so to put an end to European funding of activities involving the destruction of human embryos.
The European Commission will verify the signatures in the course of the next three months and then consider whether to make the legislative reform requested by this petition.
This is one of the first initiatives of participatory democracy of European citizens that was introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon, and it has revealed the fundamental humanistic values of the EU. People now expect a legislative initiative consistent with the results of the support campaign, which has—as Msgr. Piotr Mazurkiewicz, Official of the Pontifical Council for the Family, points out—an ecumenical and inter-religious character. «The cooperation among the Pro-Life movements across Europe and of European citizens who mobilized themselves in “ONE OF US” is in itself ecumenical—says Msgr. Mazurkiewicz: It has brought together Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox Christians, and even Muslims as well as organizations not affiliated with any religion. It outlines a new identity of a united Europe: Europe in favor of life and concretely in defense of human beings without discrimination».
Italy is the country that stands out with the largest number of signatures collected: over 600,000. Poland followed with 250,000. Malta was third in percentage of signatures collected in proportion to its population.
«The peoples of Europe have expressed themselves and, with an unprecedented result, ask the Community institutions to come out from behind the wall of ambiguity, and to say without unhesitatingly and without pretense that each person is the holder of rights, without distinction or boundaries. This is true especially of the weakest: the one who has been conceived and is not yet born» says, on behalf of the Italian leaders of the organizing committee, the President of Movimento per la Vita, Carlo Casini.
