The European Commission announced this Tuesday that it has proceeded with the registration of a European Citizens' Initiative that proposes the creation of a universal basic income for the European population, with the aim that citizens can "decouple" their income from the need for employment, especially in the face of the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics, fields for which, according to the proponents of the proposal, "there will soon not be enough jobs" for everyone in the European Union.
In particular, the promoters call on Brussels to adopt "all necessary and legal measures that can help with the introduction" of a single basic income for the EU Member States and to issue a recommendation for countries to work in a coordinated manner in the implementation of this mechanism.
The registration of the initiative does not imply that the Commission has yet evaluated the content of the request, but rather that it has verified that it meets the formal conditions to be legally admissible. From this moment on, the period opens during which the organizers must collect the required signatures so that the Community Executive is obliged to rule on the merits of the proposal.
The Community Executive will only be obliged to respond if the organizers obtain at least one million endorsements distributed across a minimum of seven Member States within a maximum period of twelve months. Once this threshold is reached, Brussels will have to decide whether to study the initiative in depth and, if it chooses not to do so, provide a detailed justification for the reasons.