Commission registers two new European citizens' initiatives

On 19 May 2026 the Commission registered two European citizens' initiatives on the protection of biodiversity and ecosystems: 

• the ‘Rights for Nature: Empower Citizens to Represent and Protect Ecosystems’ initiative, inviting the Commission to ‘recognise rights of nature in European law via a legal act such as a directive or a regulation to strengthen the protection of ecosystems’.
• the ‘Reconnecting nature through the creation of European biodiversity corridors’ initiative, calling on the Commission to present a proposal ‘to reconnect nature in Europe through a coordination framework for ecological connectivity between inland water and land ecosystems’ and ‘overcome ecosystem fragmentation and support biodiversity and resilience’. 

These initiatives are the 6th and 7th initiatives registered in 2026. The initiative organisers have six months to open the signature collection.