European Citizens’ Initiative Hearing by EU Parliament

Save Cruelty-Free Cosmetics — Commit to a Europe Without Animal Testing

This is a public hearing about what has been termed ‘ECI 2’, the initiative to end animal testing in Europe. More than a million signatures have been gathered to support the initiative. The European Commission is now required to respond to the demands. When the EU Parliament voted on a similar initiative in 2021 the vote was 667 to 4 in favour of actions to ‘accelerate the transition to innovation without the use of animals in research, regulatory testing and education.’

The hearing will include presentations by the ECI organisers (including PETA and the Eurogroup for Animals), and three panel discussions:

1. Protect and strengthen the cosmetics animal testing ban: the ECI objective is to ban testing on animals ‘for any purpose at any time’. 
2. Transform EU chemicals regulation: the ECI objective is to ‘manage chemicals without the addition of new animal testing requirements’
3. Modernise science in the EU: the ECI objective is to ‘commit to a legislative proposal to phase out all animal testing in the EU before the end of the current legislative term’ (2024). One of the presenters is Merel Ritskes-Hoitinga, Dipl. ECLAM.

The link to listen to the hearing is https://multimedia.europarl.europa.eu/en/webstreaming/peti-envi-agri-committee-meeting_20230525-0900-COMMITTEE-ENVI-AGRI-PETI. No prior registration is necessary. The stream should also be available to watch after the meeting.