NEWS

25th July 2023, press release: European Commission Backs Phase-Out of Animal Use in Experiments and Chemicals Tests but Ignores Citizens’ Wishes on Cosmetics (PDF)
25th May 2023, press release: ECI moves forward with a hearing at the European Parliament (PDF)
25th May 2023, publication of briefing prepared by the ECI organisers (PDF)

 

European Citizens’ Initiative

Every year across Europe, around ten million animals are used in laboratories in testing and research. Dogs, cats, monkeys, pigs, rats, mice, rabbits and other animals are kept behind locked doors, their short lives spent suffering in experiments that seldom deliver on their promise to advance human health and environmental protection. Not only do cruel and outdated animal experiments fail animals, but they also fail humans too. We need this suffering to end – for the animals and for better medicine, better product safety and better environmental protection. We want to see humane, human-relevant, animal-free science properly funded and fully utilised.

That’s why we - PETA, Cruelty Free Europe, the ECEAE, Eurogroup for Animals, HSI Europe - started a European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) which ran from 1st Sept. 2021 until 31st August 2022. The ECI is calling on the European Commission:

• To protect and strengthen the cosmetics animal testing ban; that means cosmetics without animal testing for any purpose at any time
• To protect human health and the environment from chemicals using modern science not animals
• An ambitious EU-wide phase-out action plan to bring testing on animals to an end

And the citizens of Europe agree – over 1.2 million of you have signed the ECI! Thank you to everyone for your much appreciated support!

What happens next?

Together with many other organisations across Europe, we collected an incredible 1,217,916 validated signatures on our Save Cruelty Free Cosmetics/End Animal Testing European Citizens’ Initiative. But what does this mean, and what happens next?

• There is a three-month validation period where we bundle the digital and paper signatures together and an authority in each country then verifies them. Because this is an official EU initiative, each signature goes through a verification process.
• The authorities will then come back to us with a final figure that we can submit to the European Commission.
• The Commission will then carefully examine the initiative. Within a month after receiving the initiative, Commission representatives will meet us so we can explain in detail the issues raised in their initiative.
• Within three months, the initiative will have a hearing in the European Parliament followed by a possible vote.
• Within six months, the Commission will adopt a formal response spelling out what action it will propose in response to the citizens' initiative.