This sort of initiative isn't part of Irish political practice: what are they good for in real life?

The great danger of such initiatives is that the high costs of entry - 1 million signatures in several countries is an awful lot and would require serious funds/organisation - perhaps only available to major churches, media groups, business lobbies, and perhaps some political parties with a major pan European base.

On the one hand it is an obviously positive feature of the Treaty in that it could lead to greater popular engagement, and on the other hand it could favour larger established status quo or even reactionary organisations.

The mechanics of collecting the signatures would be important.  Are online petitions like StopBlair acceptable?  Would a mobile phone based X factor style petition be sufficiently secure or too easy to game by phone companies or other well connected interests.  How do you prevent multiple voting /identity theft?  

Would this cheapen the whole process and lead to crazy initiatives - e.g. death penalty in wake of terrorist incident - or be a great way to engage younger and politically indifferent/disaffected people who might not otherwise vote?

On the one hand it would be great if there were innovative mechanisms found to encourage greater participation in policy formulation - e.g. mandating greater CO2 reductions in the run-up to COP16 - but if (say) conservative Churches got together to propose greater restrictions on Sunday trading or public birth control or abortion services, wouldn't we take an entirely different view?  Is it possible to mount a counter-petition to one you disagree with, and, again, would this not favour established organisations?

So the problem as I see it - is to make the process easy enough to engage large numbers - so as not to favour only the well-funded well established major organisations - but at the same time not to trivialise the whole process into some kind of knee-jerk X-factor style reactionary couch potato politics.

notes from no w here

The citizens' initiative comes from the (Giscard) constitutional convention. The key limiting factor is that the Commission's right of initiative is paramount under the community method, therefore regardless how many signatures are collected, the Commission is not obliged to act (and before it did it would still be obliged to carry out impact assessments and the like anyway). Politically, of course, a large number of signatures may compel it to act. But even then, once the Commission presents a proposal as a result of a citizens' initiative, Parliament and Council still have to agree it too.

One role for the citizens' initiative will be to add weight to certain positions in the interinstitutional balance. In particular, to strengthen the position of the EP and Commission vis-à-vis the Council. Where a weight of public opinion in support of a measure can be shown, governments may find it harder to block it in the Council. On the other hand, they may assume that few can distinguish between the institutions, so governments' failure to act may be put down to "Brussels" anyway.

In any case the time taken for legislation to get through the system means that the organisers would need to keep the publicity pressure up for a long time after the signatures are collected if it's not just to fizzle out.

One could imagine a campaign such as Fathers4Justice trying to organise a legislative initiative for example to make it easier to see their children who live in other member states. That might not be a big step beyond the existing Brussels II Regulation, but it would certainly tread on the toes of national governments. So even assuming they got the signatures, got a proposal from the Commission, got support in the EP, they would still need the Council to agree.

Being able to show that 1 (or 2 or 3) million (out of 500 million in the EU) supported them probably isn't going to change a government's minds, unless a large proportion of the signatures are in their country. Therefore to be effective, the signature collectors would need to focus from the outset on the countries where government support for their cause is least likely to be forthcoming.

Whether interest groups and lobbies will see it as a worthwhile tool remains to be seen. Greenpeace, for example, has the resources to gather 0.2% of the population in nine or more member states, but would they see a worthwhile return? It will be interesting to see whether eurosceptic groups try to make use of the initiative, with the aim of generating ill will when their proposals are rejected by the Commission.