Sofia Amado (master's student in Administrative Law at the School of Law of the University of Minho)
My Voice, My Choice is the provocative slogan chosen to title one of the largest European Citizens Initiatives to this day, uniting over 300 organisations and countless volunteers and supporters across the European Union. According to the legal addendum accompanying this submission, the goal is to create a mechanism of “financial support to Member States that would be able to perform safe termination of pregnancies, in accordance with their domestic law, for anyone in Europe who still lacks access to safe and legal abortion”,[1] in the format of an opt-in mechanism that is open to Member States on a voluntary basis. After the arduous journey of collecting one million signatures over a year – which involved an impressive marketing strategy that included selling merchandise and giving out stickers –,[2] the initiative passed its first trial by fire on 12 December 2025, receiving majority support in the European Parliament. The second and vital victory was achieved just a few days ago.
When analysing the European Commission’s Communication on this subject,[3] published on 26 February 2026, we can conclude that My Voice, My Choice accomplished its main goal, although not in the way initially envisioned. In accordance with Article 168(7) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), the European Commission affirms that “financial support falls within EU competence but […] only for actions that comply with the legislation of the Member State in which they are carried out, and only for as long as such financing does not (directly or indirectly) undermine the competence of Member States to organise healthcare, including its bioethical choices”.[4]
Consequently, the Commission has decided not to submit a new legal act proposal, but rather to allow EU Member States to expand the scope of an existing fund – the European Social Fund + (ESF+). This programme is implemented through shared management by the Commission and Member States, and it asserts that one of its specific objectives is “enhancing equal and timely access to quality, sustainable and affordable services, including services that promote the access to housing and person-centred care including healthcare”.[5] Consistent with this, national and regional authorities of Member States who wish to participate in this initiative can now amend their outlined ESF+ programme to explicitly include access to abortion healthcare in its objectives. Although the EU4Health programme[6] was only briefly mentioned in this Communication, we believe that, as the current multi-annual financial support period is set to end in 2027, the Commission may accommodate this change in financing to the following years.
The fact that this initiative prompted the Commission to take action shows the power that civil society can exert over the governance of the European Union. For its part, such developments appear to be closely aligned with the theory of oversight proposed by Mathew McCubbins and Thomas Schwartz in 1984, commonly referred to as the police patrol versus fire alarm theory,[7] initially conceived to examine how the United States Congress supervises the executive branch’s actions. Using a suggestive and well-adjusted metaphor, the authors argue that – contrary to the views of various scholars at the time – Congress had not neglected its oversight responsibilities but had instead opted for a different method of conducting it. What was expected of the Congress, they affirmed, was for it to adopt a police patrol approach to supervising the executive branch, meaning that it should examine, question and detect any violations of the legislative goals by its own initiative. This would involve a centralised, active and almost inspector-like means of working which would not necessarily prove to be more effective. In contrast, what the Congress had in fact embraced was a fire alarm approach that enabled it to intervene in response to complaints; in other words, when the alarm sounded, it was time to address an issue.
Throughout their paper, McCubbins and Schwartz present a variety of arguments to prove that this is the most effective model and therefore the one chosen by Congress. The core of this theory rests on three assumptions:[8] i) Congress selects one form of oversight over another when legislating oversight features and mechanisms or evaluating an executive agent’s performance, ii) Congress members are purely political, defending their potential supporters’ interests and seeking credit for any benefits they receive and iii) the executive branch acts as an agent of the Congress, particularly of the subcommittees from which it requires authorisation. While one can easily point out some scepticism behind these three premises and acknowledge that the reality is perhaps somewhat different, the conclusions drawn in favour of the fire alarm oversight will still derive from them. As the authors note, Congress had passed legislation to facilitate complaints about the federal government’s actions – such as the Legal Services Corporation – and created administrative mechanisms that allowed the self-rectification of administrative mistakes. The mere existence of organised groups and lobbying activities constituted a characteristic of the fire alarm model, as these groups were there to bring such complaints to the attention of Congress and enable the development and clarification of the legislative goals in accordance with the interests of those affected by them.
When analysing this model, we can conclude that it relies on three main actors to function: citizen-driven alarms, procedural alarms and judicial alarms. In this post, we offer a non-exhaustive overview of how this theory can be useful in examining how citizen-driven alarms might operate within the contemporary context of the EU. We are not specifically referring to the mechanisms created to address complaints about violations of European law, the failure of national authorities to apply it correctly, or maladministration in general. These are also clear manifestations of the fire alarm system, and figures such as the European Ombudsman play a crucial role in ensuring its implementation. However, although they depend on citizens’ complaints to ascertain what is not going according to plan, they represent citizen-driven alarms in a very narrow sense. They are not exactly citizen-driven alarms; they are citizen-enabled alarms, in the sense that all a citizen needs to do is press a button to trigger them. Our aim, on the other hand, is to focus on the scenario in which citizens have to build the alarm itself, in an area that the EU deems safe and therefore has no emergency fire escape plan in place. Hence, it is crucial to consider the role that civil society can play in the European democratic system – where it is not merely a recipient of approved laws, but can also actively promote the enforcement of pre-established basic rules and principles – and to reflect on a structure in which “global bodies grant access to citizens, whose participation is not allowed by national law, and foster strategic alliances between global institutions and civil societies against national governments”.[9]
In this sense, My Voice, My Choice is the perfect, most up-to-date example of precisely this. Making use of the European Citizens’ Initiative, a citizen-driven alarm in the true sense of the term, the movement has proven that it can unite people across borders and start a bottom-up political debate[10] in response not only to a group of norms that are currently being disregarded, but also to an administrative omission. The legal basis for sounding the fire alarm is, according to the movement itself,[11] the Treaty on the European Union (Articles 2 and 3), the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (Articles 8, 9 and 168) and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (Articles 1, 3, 4 and 21); preventing unsafe abortions, they say, is a public health matter within the scope of the EU, and it upholds the values, objectives and fundamental rights recognised by the EU. As such, in this practical example, civil society’s role is not simply a reactive one, as it is when it complains to the European Ombudsman, but a proactive one, where it propels legislative and administrative action on a subject that was previously ignored.
Furthermore, the movement demonstrates that civil society can influence legislative and administrative practices within the European political model by working with policy agents. Here, we witness a multi-level alliance: NGOs operating at a national and international level, citizens exercising their influence at a local level and even political leaders holding positions within the Union’s own bodies all come together with the purpose of pressing for the adoption of a transnational administrative act. This is how the “subgovernmental triangle”[12] works: the issue was brought to the European Parliament’s attention by an organised citizens’ movement and, after approving this initiative,[13] the European Parliament was tasked with using this fire alarm to pressure the European Commission to address the issue. By welcoming My Voice, My Choice, the European Parliament not only armed itself with political ammunition but also emphasised the democratic importance of embracing a movement that gathered 1.2 million signatures and involved more than 300 organisations across the European Union.
We do not know if this will lead to autonomous legal act in the future. However, what we can safely conclude at this moment in time is that My Voice, My Choice has served its purpose as a fire alarm: it has brought everyone’s attention to this particular fire, proving there is no need for police on the streets in places where civilians are paying attention. And, judging by appearances, they will not stop until the fire is put out.
[1] See https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/initiatives/details/2024/000004_en.
[2] Read more at https://citizens-initiative-forum.europa.eu/citizens-experiences/blogs/building-momentum-funding-and-strategy-behind-my-voice-my-choice_en.
[3] See European Commission, “Communication from the Commission on the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) ‘My Voice, My Choice: For Safe and Accessible Abortion”, C (2026) 3225 final, accessed February 27, 2026, https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/sites/default/files/2026-02/C_2026_3225_EN.pdf.
[4] See page 9 of the above-mentioned communication.
[5] See Article 4(1)(k) of the Regulation (EU) 2021/1057 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 June 2021 establishing the European Social Fund Plus (ESF+) and repealing Regulation (EU) No 1296/2013, accessed 27 February 2026, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32021R1057.
[6] Learn more about this at https://health.ec.europa.eu/funding/eu4health-programme-2021-2027-vision-healthiereuropean-union_en.
[7] See Mathew McCubbins and Thomas Schwartz, “Congressional oversight overlooked: police patrols versus fire alarms”, American Journal of Political Science, v. 28, no. 1 (1984), accessed February 22, 2026, https://doi.org/10.2307/2110792.
[8] See McCubbins and Schwartz, “Congressional oversight overlooked…”, 166-167.
[9] See Sabino Cassese, “Administrative law without the State? The challenge of global regulation”, NYU Journal of International Law and Politics, v. 37, no. 4 (2005): 670, accessed February 24, 2026, https://iilj.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Cassese-Administrative-Law-Without-the-State-2005.pdf.
[10] As the mechanism of the European Citizens’ Initiative is described by the Secretariat-General of the European Commission in Guide to the European Citizens’ Initiative – Help shape the European Union, Publications Office of the European Union (2024), 3, accessed February 25, 2026, https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2792/305873.
[11] See the above-referenced legal addendum.
[12] See McCubbins and Schwartz, “Congressional oversight overlooked…”, 173.
[13] Text adopted on 17 December 2025, available at https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-10-2025-0338_EN.html and accessed on February 25, 2026.
Picture credit: by Tara Winstead on pexels.com.
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