european-citizen-initiatives

[european-citizen-initiatives]

scottish trans/the equality network have shared a how to and templates to email your mp/msp about the supreme court decision from april 16th if you're living in the uk. they have templates for both trans peeps and our allies.

if you live in the uk, please take a few minutes to do this (they even find who are your representatives so you don't have to do it yourself) and if you're from outside the uk, please take a moment to reblog for visibility. thank you.

[european-citizen-initiatives]

I know we’ve already reached the 1 million goal, but we’re only 800 people away from Croatia hitting their quota as well, so if you know any people living there, please tell them to go sign today so we can hopefully have another country reach their minimum amount of signatures.

Ban on conversion practices in the European Union

Hello everyone here is on ongoing call to ban conversion therapy across the EU. The call is as of writing this post not even at 140k votes. So, if you haven't voted already and are a citizen of the EU (my apologies to non-EU European citizen's) please take the time to vote. It only takes a couple of minutes to do so.

End of collection period: 17.05.2025

Mod L

[european-citizen-initiatives]

I don't see this mentioned here, things are getting worse and worse for us queers in Hungary

[european-citizen-initiatives]

Calling all Brits on this hellsite.

We all saw Elon Musk do the nazi salute at the Trump inauguration. We know that he is influencing and fanning the flames of right wing political parties.

And that very well may include ours.

Because Elon Musk has pledged to donate $100 million to the Reform party. He has since mentioned that it might be hard to give such a large sum now.

But I don’t think we should take our chances. And I think we can agree that letting billionaires influence our countries politics is a terrible idea.

If you also agree here’s a link to a Parliament petition.

It calls for the government to remove loopholes that allow wealthy foreign individuals to make donations into UK political parties (e.g. by funnelling through UK registered companies).

As it is a parliament petition the government are required to debate it in parliament. But for that to happen it needs to reach 100,000 signatures.

Non British folk I’m afraid you guys can’t sign but I encourage you guys to reblog so that more people can see this.

[european-citizen-initiatives]

as always if you're eligible to sign, sign and share. if you're not eligible, share but don't sign.

[european-citizen-initiatives]

🇪🇺🇧🇪🇱🇺🇳🇱🇬🇧recall of coca cola branded drinks due to contamination with cleaning fluid🇬🇧🇳🇱🇱🇺🇧🇪🇪🇺

first recall is belgium, luxembourg, and the netherlands🇧🇪🇱🇺🇳🇱

second recall is united kingdom🇬🇧, might be more to come

(and also some were shipped to france and germany and other places in europe, no recalls there (yet?) 🇫🇷🇩🇪)

Coca-Cola has recalled its drinks in some countries across Europe because they contain "higher levels" of a chemical called chlorate.

...

Chlorate can be produced when chlorine-based disinfectants are used in water treatment and food processing.

...

Affected products include the Coke, Fanta, Sprite, Tropico and Minute Maid brands, according to the Belgium branch of Coca-Cola's international bottling and distribution operation.

...

The company added the issue has affected "a very small number of imported cans" of Appletiser, Coca-Cola Original Taste, Coca-Cola Zero Sugar, Diet Coke and Sprite Zero with production codes from 328 GE to 338 GE" which Coca-Cola said can be found on the base of the can.

...

Exposure to high levels of chlorate can cause health problems including thyroid problems, especially among children and infants.

emphasis mine.

Cans of Coca-Cola Original Taste, Coca-Cola Zero Sugar, Diet Coke, and Sprite Zero sent to cafes and restaurants are being withdrawn as well as 6x250ml Appletiser multipacks sent to UK supermarkets.

...

The affected cans carry production codes from 328 GE to 338 GE on their base.

emphasis mine.

this is an ongoing situation with some really confusing messaging trying to downplay how many drinks this is, and may involve more countries, more products, and more recalls down the line.

the long story short here is a TON of coca cola drinks in europe have the leftovers of cleaning fluid in them, and there are probably going to be a lot more developments here.

it is a good time to avoid coca cola drinks.

[european-citizen-initiatives]

There's an EU initiative going on right now that essentially boils down to wanting to force videogame publishers with paid games and/or games with paid elements such as DLC, expansions and microtransactions to leave said games in a playable state after they end support, or in simpler terms, make them stop killing games.

A "playable state" would be something like an offline mode for previously always online titles, or the ability for people to host their own servers where reasonably possible just to name some examples.

I don't think I need to tell anyone that having something you paid for being taken from you is bad, which is a thing that routinely happens with live service and other always online games with a notable recent example being The Crew which is now permanently unplayable.

Any EU citizen is eligible to sign the initiative, but only once and if you mess up that's it. You can find it here. (https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/initiatives/details/2024/000007_en)

Even if you're not European or you signed it already, you can share this initiative with anyone who is, even if they don't care about videogames specifically because this needs a million signatures and there is different thresholds that need to be met for each EU country for their votes to even count and could also be a precedent for other similar practices like when Sony removed a bunch of Discovery TV content people paid for.

[european-citizen-initiatives]

Well fucks? Get to it!

[european-citizen-initiatives]

Would anyone like to join me in my New Year's tradition of reading about good things that happened this year?

[european-citizen-initiatives]

Full names and details of every man who was convicted of raping Gisèle Pelicot. The list includes 50 men who could be identified, besides Gisèle's husband, ranging in age from 27 to 74. Among them are a firefighter, a journalist, a nurse, a construction worker, and a prison guard. Most have families of their own, and only about half had previous convictions.

[european-citizen-initiatives]

you guys made luigi mangione trend for days and I need to see the same energy for brianna boston. she is a 43 year old mother of three who ended a phone call with blue cross blue shield (after being denied a claim) “delay deny depose, you people are next” and is now being held under a 100,000$ bond and could face FIFTEEN years of prison if charged. she has no weapons, her record is clean, and yet she is being held behind bars. they are afraid of the public and are trying to subdue. do not let them!!!! be outraged that our freedom of speech is being threatened!!!!! deny defend depose! free brianna boston!

[european-citizen-initiatives]

"In 2021, scientists in Guelph, Ontario set out to accomplish something that had never been done before: open a lab specifically designed for raising bumble bees in captivity. 

Now, three years later, the scientists at the Bumble Bee Conservation Lab are celebrating a huge milestone. Over the course of 2024, they successfully pulled off what was once deemed impossible and raised a generation of yellow-banded bumble bees. 

The Bumble Bee Conservation Lab, which operates under the nonprofit Wildlife Preservation Canada, is the culmination of a decade-long mission to save the bee species, which is listed as endangered under the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation...

Although the efforts have been in motion for over a decade, the lab itself is a recent development that has rapidly accelerated conservation efforts. 

For bee scientists, the urgency was necessary. 

“We could see the major declines happening rapidly in Canada’s native bumble bees and knew we had to act, not just talk about the problem, but do something practical and immediate,” Woolaver said. 

Yellow-banded bumble bees, which live in southern Canada and across a huge swatch of the United States, were once a common species.

However, like many other bee species, their populations declined sharply in the mid-1990s from a litany of threats, including pathogens, pesticides, and dramatic habitat loss. 

Since the turn of the century, scientists have plunged in to give bees a helping hand. But it was only in the last decade that Woolaver and his team “identified a major gap” in bumble bee conservation and set out to solve it. 

“No one knew how to breed threatened species in captivity,” he explained. “This is critically important if assurance populations are needed to keep a species from going extinct and to assist with future reintroductions.”

To start their experiment, scientists hand-selected wild queen bees throughout Ontario and brought them to the temperature-controlled lab, where they were “treated like queens” and fed tiny balls of nectar and pollen. 

Then, with the help of Ontario’s African Lion Safari theme park, the queens were brought out to small, outdoor enclosures and paired with other bees with the hope that mating would occur. 

For some pairs, they had to play around with different environments to “set the mood,” swapping out spacious flight cages for cozier colony boxes. 

And it worked. 

“The two biggest success stories of 2024 were that we successfully bred our focal species, yellow-banded bumble bees, through their entire lifecycle for the first time,” Woolaver said. 

“[And] the first successful overwintering of yellow-banded bumble bees last winter allowed us to establish our first lab generation, doubling our mating successes and significantly increasing the number of young queens for overwintering to wake early spring and start their own colonies for future generations and future reintroductions.”

Although the first-of-its-kind experiment required careful planning, consideration, resources, and a decade of research, Woolaver hopes that their efforts inspire others to help bees in backyards across North America. 

“Be aware that our native bumble bees really are in serious decline,” Woolaver noted, “so when cottagers see bumble bees pollinating plants in their gardens, they really are seeing something special.”"

-via GoodGoodGood, December 9, 2024

[european-citizen-initiatives]

Redditors crashed the website with donations over $25k and 0 wishes left. via /r/MadeMeSmile

Click here and follow to get more daily positivity on your dash!

[european-citizen-initiatives]

Stop Fake Food Origin on Label

Another citizen’s initiative, this one with regards to the origin labels of food. This initiative searches to stop misleading advertising on food products (making it appear that something came from one place while actually being from another like the French pastries I bought last week that after further inspection ended up being made in the Netherlands), and for those products to meet the environmental, health and labour standards to protect consumer health and the planet.

The initiative is currently at 210k votes.

End of the collection period: 21-Sept-2025

[european-citizen-initiatives]

[european-citizen-initiatives]

Ban on conversion practices in the European Union

Hello everyone here is on ongoing call to ban conversion therapy across the EU. The call is as of writing this post not even at 140k votes. So, if you haven't voted already and are a citizen of the EU (my apologies to non-EU European citizen's) please take the time to vote. It only takes a couple of minutes to do so.

End of collection period: 17.05.2025

Mod L

[european-citizen-initiatives]

Good news of June 2024