IRN failure leaves Portugal out of the European petition to end cage age

Brussels, 15 July 2020 – Portugal may be the only Member State left out of the European Citizens' Initiative ‘End The Cage Age’, due to a computer failure at the Institute of Registries and Notaries that made it impossible to send to the European Commission the corfirmation of the identities of the Portuguese citizens who signed the petition. This initiative aims to ban the caging of animals in livestock production and has collected more than 1.6 million signatures across the European Union (EU). 

The citizens identities must be verified by the governments of the Member States three months after the petition organiser, in this case the international NGO Compassion in World Farming (CIWF), sends the signatures to the competent national organisations. The signatures we sent to IRN in December 2019 and should have been confirmed until early March 2020. 

Following this failure, NGOs Compassion in World Farming and SOS Animal - the petition representative in Portugal -, contacted IRN asking for explanations. They were told it was due to a delay in installing a new computer system and that it would be solved until 9 March. Ever since, none of the NGO has received an answer from the IRN.

On 1 June 2020, the General Inspectorate of Justice Services (IGSJ), after a contact from SOS Animal, opened a process to request clarification from the President of the IRN Board of Directors. Since there was no response until 6 July, the IGSJ sent an insistence letter to the IRN, reiterating the request for clarification.

Complementing the efforts of the NGOs, MEP Francisco Guerreiro sent today a letter to the IRN, also asking for clarification and appealing for the entity to assume its responsibility and respect the citizens.

“The IRN did not respect the deadlines, it does not respond to the petition's promoters nor to the General Inspectorate of Justice Services and does not send the European Commission confirmation of the identities of the citizens who signed the European initiative. For inexplicable reasons, the voice of the 16,501 Portuguese who want to see an end to the confinement of animals in cages in livestock production may, shamefully, be the only one not represented among all Member States. What signal will we be sending to our citizens and Brussels if we ignore a cause that touches so many citizens, especially given that we will assume the next presidency of the EU Council?” – comments the MEP.

For a European Citizens' Initiative to be submitted to the Commission, a minimum of one million signatures from at least seven Member States is required. The petition meets the criteria and there is the possibility of being sent, even without Portuguese representation.

European Citizens’ Initiatives aim to encourage citizens' participation in the democratic process. So far, only 5 have completed the process, due to the difficulty of collecting a minimum of one million signatures. 

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