If you want to suggest new EU legislation, you need to find a lot of like-minded people from all over Europe and overcome bureaucratic obstacles along the way.

How it works: Citizens as lawmakers

I'd like to know how I can have  the EU do what I want.

Through the Citizens' Initiative.  It's part of the Lisbon Treaty.

It means people can organise  online or paper petitions

If they have a real point  to put on our table

with a view to getting a law  or EU legislation in the end,

they need to get together  with a few friends.

Precisely, they need to find six other  friends from six different EU countries.

The seven people  from seven different EU countries

must first register their proposal  with the Commission,

If it is, organisers have twelve months  to collect one million signatures.

The minimum total of signatures  needed for each country

The Commission then has 3 months  to decide whether or not to act.

It's a step forward because citizens  can now put things on the agenda,

because we need  real citizen participation.

In the end, we also need referenda,  on the European level.

So it's a step forward,  but we need further steps.

your one million signatures will get you  a top-level meeting at the Commission.

Your proposal will also be discussed  at a meeting open to the public.

You may not get exactly  what you were hoping for

but your ideas will be debated  and may still lead to changes in EU law.

not only do those original seven friends

get to sit down with a key commissioner,

or somebody very senior  in the Commission, to discuss their idea,

but they will also have a hearing,  probably in the Parliament,

where the idea can be discussed  much more publicly and widely.

Countries demand differing levels of  detail about those who sign the petition.

But the Citizens' Initiative may have  played a part in persuading Irish voters

to accept the Lisbon Treaty.  And they may be among the first to use it.

In Ireland, there's been discussion  about the Corporation Tax.

If that were to be seen  to be threatened in Europe,

I could see a Citizens' Initiative  arising around that

or perhaps also the interest rate  that we have to pay in the bailout.

The lack of guarantees of a positive  outcome may prove a handicap.

A successful collection of signatures  for a citizens' initiative in California

must lead to a referendum.  The downside is that large corporations

are among the few capable of  organising or affording such an exercise.

They will use the citizens' initiative  to stop laws they don't like.

They will have a lobby consultancy set up  a front group pretending to be citizens

and then pump in money  to get the signatures collected

and win the referendum campaign.  So this is really a farce.

The public have long been able to petition  the EP over the application of laws,

now the facility to propose legislation  should be in place by 2012.

Most MEPs hope it's just the first step  and that many more will follow.