On 30 November the first official trialogue meeting took place on the implementation modalities for the citizens’ initiative. Further to this meeting, the trialogue has reached an agreement in principle regarding the instrument introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon which will enable a million citizens to demand the Commission to submit proposals in its areas of competence.

The representatives of the Council, European Parliament and Commission have reached an agreement in principle on some of the issues at stake regarding the implementation of citizens' initiative. First, the trialogue agree on the minimum age to sign in a citizens' initiative. According to this  agreement the minimum age would finally be set at the European election voting age. Institutions also agreed on the verification of the admissibility of a citizens’ initiative which will be carried out upon registration.

Agreement was also reached on the auditions, on the identity data required for verification. The Parliament sought to simplify the signing of initiatives by deleting a requirement to give an ID card number when signing. In their view, the signatory's name, address, nationality and the date and place of birth should suffice, and it would be up to the Member States to verify the authenticity of the signatures.

The three institutions agreed on the setting up of a citizens’ committee to organize the initiative and communicate with the European institutions as well as limiting the capacity to support of a citizen initiative only to natural persons.

Despite Parliament's request to grant only a 6 months period for the implementation of the citiziens’ initiative regulation, it seems that the request of a great majority of the Member States asking for a period of 12 months will be foreseen.

Since last informal meeting of the trialogue in 17 November, significant progress was made with discussions within the permanent Representatives Committee, which enabled the Council’s position to be clarified, and the unanimous vote within the AFCO Committee of the European Parliament which in November asked for to make this instrument more simple and clear to really increase citizens' participation.