The Right2Water campaign.

Access to good quality water was the topic of the first-ever official hearing held for a European citizens' initiative at the European Parliament on 17 February. The Right2Water campaign wants universal access to clean water and sanitation and opposes the liberalization of water services. They collected nearly two million signatures in order to ask the European Commission to produce EU legislation on this. We talked to the organizers to find out more.

Organizers of the Right2Water campaign are urging the Commission to guarantee access to water and sanitation for all Europeans and give legally binding guarantees that water services will not be liberalized in the EU.

 "Water is not a commodity, it is part of our heritage," said Anne-Marie Perret, president of the Right2Water citizens' committee. "We think the initiative is a step in the right direction, but we need to go further and convince the whole Commission to stop applying internal market and competition rules, which are technocratic, and move towards rules based more on the principles of social justice and democracy."

Citizens' initiatives give people the chance to ask for new European legislation, provided organizers collect at least one million signatures  from all over the EU in support of the plans. Ms Perret said it was important to educate people more on the possibilities the initiatives give them, although she acknowledged that one of the problems was getting enough signatures. “Some of the citizens refused to sign because they had to give their ID number," she said. "There were also big problems with the online signing."