The second European Citizens’ Initiative, which seeks to ban European Union funding for abortion-related research and foreign aid, will be the subject of a hearing at the European Parliament next week.

Martin Schulz, the president of the Parliament, has backed a plan to give the legal-affairs committee a lead role in the hearing on the controversial initiative, which was signed by 1.7 million Europeans. The committee is thought to be more sympathetic to the initiative than the other two committees dealing with it, on industry, research and energy and on development.

Schulz approved a proposal from Doris Pack, a centre-right German MEP, in her capacity as chair of the conference of committee chairs. Pack proposed that the two aspects of the European Citizens’ Initiative, ‘One of Us’ – research and foreign aid – should be treated in two sections, with the legal-affairs committee involved in both. The Parliament’s industry committee would manage the section on medical research involving human stem cells, while the development committee would manage the section on foreign aid.

The development committee is thought to be hostile to the initiative – the aim of which is to ban activities in development aid, public health and research that involve the destruction of human embryos – because it would undo a decades-old focus on reproductive health as a core element of foreign aid. The research committee, meanwhile, is reluctant to re-open debates that complicated the adoption of the EU’s multi-annual research programme, Horizon 2020.

The European Commission’s initial proposal of November 2011 allowed EU funding from Horizon 2020 for research involving human stem cells, provided that a project received “the necessary approvals from the member states” and respected “fundamental ethical principles”.

“The use of human stem cells, be they adult or embryonic, if any, depends on the judgement of the scientists in view of the objectives they want to achieve and is subject to stringent Ethics Review,” the proposal said. That language was approved by the European Parliament last November in a plenary vote on the regulation establishing Horizon 2020.

In its opinion on the programme, the legal-affairs committee, by contrast, recommended “that research which either involves the destruction of human embryos or which uses human embryonic stem cells should be completely excluded from EU funding”. This would mean that it is “up to individual member states to decide, in line with their ethical rules, whether to fund such research from their own budgets”. It also demanded that the Commission “actively support research aimed at developing alternatives to embryonic stem cells”.

The European Commission has until 28 May to present its response to the initiative, either recommending legislative or other action, or explaining why it does not recommend action. The Parliament has no formal say in the Commission’s response.

One of us

The hearing on the ‘One of Us’ citizens’ initiative, on 10 April, is being prepared just as close ties between the organisers and two centre-right MEPs are coming under scrutiny. Carlo Casini, the chair of the constitutional- affairs committee, is president the Italian Movement for Life. That organisation set up the ‘Vita Nova’ foundation, source of €120,581 of the €159,219 cost of the launch of the initiative. According to the organisers, the ‘Vita Nova’ contribution was used to pay the rent and running costs of the organisers’ office from 2012 until earlier this year, and to set up its website. Casini’s Movement for Life is listed as a national contact point for Italy on the ‘One of Us’ website.

A Spanish organisation, ‘Valores y Sociedad’, paid €33,000 for the salary of one person between December 2012 and February 2014. The organisation’s president is Jaime Mayor Oreja, a Spaniard who is a vice-chair of the European People’s Party group in the European Parliament and a member of the constitutional-affairs committee. The balance of funding came from the ‘Fundación Provida de Cataluña’, according to the organisers.

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