NGOs Demand Brussels Bypass National Abortion Restrictions

The European Commission has made its stance clear. This initiative is totally illegal under the EU Treaties, but they've given it the go-ahead.

From The European Conservative

By Tamás Orbán

More than 100,000 people signed the petition calling for EU taxpayers to finance “abortion tourism.”

NGOs from eight EU member states have launched a European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) asking the European Commission to pass legislation that would force countries with laws against abortion to pay for abortions in other EU countries.

Experts have warned that bypassing national legislation through the proposed loophole might not be legally feasible, however.

In the EU, abortion law falls strictly under national competence, meaning that Brussels cannot force any country to relax its restrictions. However, as the nine NGOs from eight EU countries behind organizing the initiative claim, Brussels could theoretically give financial support to member states with more liberal laws, thereby facilitating abortions for women from other EU countries.

According to the initiative’s website, access to abortion is limited for over 20 million women in the EU, leading some to seek out the procedure in a different member state. The proposed EU-funded financial mechanism—essentially paid for by EU taxpayers—would make abortions available to a larger number of women.

The petition, called “My Voice, My Choice,” was submitted by a collection of French, Spanish, and Croatian NGOs bearing the same name, as well as six other feminist organizations from Poland, Ireland, Slovenia, Finland, and Austria.

Under the ECI format, they have one year to reach one million signatures from across the EU while reaching a minimum threshold in at least seven countries that corresponds to its weight in the European Parliament for the Commission to consider turning the proposal into law.

The petition was officially launched on April 24th, and it already has 110,000 signatories in less than two weeks, suggesting that it won’t face many problems clearing the requirements. The organizers are not hiding the campaign’s political dimensions either, with one poster on X featuring Europe’s (and America’s) national conservative leaders.

European Citizens’ Initiatives (ECI) were introduced in 2009. Over 110 initiatives have been correctly registered since then, but only 12 have succeeded in reaching the one million signatures, with two of those still being verified at the moment.

But success does not guarantee legislation. The Commission is only required to consider a proposal once the threshold has been reached, and can simply choose to discard it just as easily, like the majority of the ten initiatives that so far have cleared verification and reached the Commission’s table. 

Incidentally, the most successful ECI with nearly 1.9 million signatories, asking the EU to ban the “financing of activities which presuppose the destruction of human embryos, in particular in the areas of research, development aid, and public health” was also rejected.

The big question facing the My Voice, My Choice campaign now is not whether it will clear all the formal requirements, but whether its proposed legislation is even legally and ethically feasible.

The idea is that countries with more liberal systems would opt to join voluntarily, and then receive EU funding that covers the medical expenses of uninsured, foreign EU citizens seeking an abortion. The patients would only need to take care of travel costs.

While the EU cannot legally interfere in member states’ abortion care, the organizers hope that this loophole would easily bypass that restriction, as no national legislation would be directly challenged or modified. 

Legal experts, however, are not all convinced of the soundness of the argument.

“It’s hard to see how the EU could legally do what these people are requesting,” Nick Fahy, director of health and wellbeing research at the RAND Europe institute commented. “It’s money, not law, but at the same time it would be the EU directly affecting the allocation of resources to health care, and that’s explicitly not allowed under [the EU treaties].”

The EU rules allow Brussels to support member countries financially, but its actions must respect the competencies and responsibilities of member states, including and especially in matters concerning public health and medical care.

Therefore, funding of “abortion tourism” from countries with more conservative laws would unavoidably be seen as a political move. Conceding to the demands would not be “a neutral act by the European Commission; that’s the [Commission] directly interfering in something highly politically sensitive,” Fahy explained.

As for the Commission’s own opinion on the matter, the EU executive body seemed to be on the fence. In its official communication, the Commission said that “there seems to be no straightforward targeted interference” with member state competences, but setting up the proposed mechanism “could nonetheless result in such interference.”

Despite the apparent concerns, the Commission still allowed the ECI to be registered. In its decision, the EU executive argues that the petition can only go forward as long as the mechanism does not aim to or result in “the undermining of the public order legislation” or even the “healthcare and ethical choices” of member states.

Apparently, the Commission was either unable to answer this question or chose not to at this point, allowing the initiative to go forward and see whether it was able to produce the required numbers by April next year before having to decide.