Article 12 Verification and certification of statements of support by the Member States

1. Each Member State shall verify and certify that the statements of support signed by its nationals comply with the provisions of this Regulation (the 'responsible Member State').


2. Within three months of the end of the collection period and without prejudice to paragraph 3 of this Article, the group of organisers shall submit the statements of support, collected online or in paper form, to the competent authorities referred to in Article 20(2) of the responsible Member State.

The group of organisers shall submit the statements of support to the competent authorities only where the minimum numbers of signatories laid down in Article 3 have been reached.

Statements of support shall be submitted to each competent authority in the responsible Member State only once, using the form set out in Annex V.

Statements of support which have been collected online shall be submitted in accordance with an electronic schema made publicly available by the Commission.

Statements of support collected in paper form and those collected online through an individual online collection system shall be submitted separately.


3. The Commission shall submit the statements of support collected online through the central online collection system, as well as those collected in paper form and uploaded pursuant to the second subparagraph of Article 10(3), to the competent authority of the responsible Member State as soon as the group of organisers has submitted the form set out in Annex V to the competent authority of the responsible Member State in accordance with paragraph 2 of this Article.

Where a group of organisers has collected statements of support through an individual online collection system, it may request the Commission to submit these statements of support to the competent authority of the responsible Member State.

The Commission shall submit the statements of support in accordance with the second to fourth subparagraph of paragraph 2 of this Article, using the file exchange service referred to in Article 4(5).


4. Within three months of receiving the statements of support, the competent authorities shall verify them on the basis of appropriate checks, which may be based on random sampling, in accordance with national law and practice.

Where statements of support collected online and in paper form are submitted separately, that period shall start running when the competent authority has received all statements of support.

For the purpose of the verification of statements of support collected in paper form, the authentication of signatures shall not be required.


5. On the basis of the verifications carried out, the competent authority shall certify the number of valid statements of support for the Member State concerned. That certificate shall be delivered, free of charge, to the group of organisers, using the model set out in Annex VI.

The certificate shall specify the number of valid statements of support collected in paper form and online, including those collected in paper form and uploaded pursuant to the second subparagraph of Article 10(3).



Regulation on the European citizens’ initiative(pdf).
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