European Citizen Action Service

 European Citizen Action Service / ECAS is an independent non-profit organisation helping individuals and associations making their voices heard with the European Institutions. It acts as a citizens’ advice bureau on EU law in the area of free movement.

ECAS launched a European telephone hotline on visible and hidden barriers to free movement which made a major impact on the EU Institutions. ECAS' staff handled some 1000 cases per year. Several hotlines have been launched subsequently. The hotline had its imitators and was closely watched by the European Commission.

ECAS helps individuals defend their free movement rights in Europe. ECAS will support cases if they concern, for example, cross-border situations in relation to free movement of people, or problems which cannot be solved through national channels and require intervention from European Institutions or cases which illustrate the need for fairer, more open administrative practice and improved systems of extrajudicial remedy. ECAS does not only deal with problems encountered by individuals, but such cases may well be submitted by organisations on their behalf (e.g. NGOs, employers’ organisations, trade unions). ECAS provides legal information and, when this is not sufficient to solve problems, it actively helps people confronted with real obstacles in the exercise of their rights. A wide range of techniques are used: “hotlines”, petitions to the European Parliament, complaints to the Commission, complaints to the European Ombudsman…

ECAS is running the Citizens Signpost Service (CSS) of the European Commission.

It is a Europe-wide service that offers citizens customer-tailored made information and advice on their rights under internal market rules. Where appropriate, the citizens are directed or “signposted” to the authority or another body (at local, national or European level) that should be able to solve their particular problems.

ECAS is here the sole contractor and coordinator responsible for the overall management of the group of legal experts and the technical environment of their service. The first tender covered the years 1996-1999 and EU-15, later it was extended for the years 2003-2006 to cover EU-25 and ECAS also re-won the tender for the years 2007-2011. For the purpose of this service ECAS has set up a group of now 50 legal experts that covers all official languages in all 27 Member States.

From the Citizens Signpost Service and its work as an advice service, ECAS has built up an experienced team of legal experts with first-hand knowledge of where the problems lie with enforcement. ECAS completed a study for the European Parliament on the application of directive 2004/38 - the so-called citizenship directive. This 250 page survey concentrates on 10 member states. It comes to similar conclusions to the Commission's report and ends with a number of recommendations. It was presented to the legal Affairs Committee and discussed at a meeting with Jacques Barrot, Vice President of the Commission in early 2009.

In April 2009, ECAS started the “One-stop mobility shops" project. It is a European funded project, undertaken within the PROGRESS programme.

The project involves 5 partners, a European level NGO - ECAS (European Citizen Action Service) and 4 other NGOs running grass-roots level operations.

The project is focused on delivering assistance and a wide range of services to vulnerable intra-EU migrants in 4 regions of the Union. Apart from day-to-day activities, the project involved 5 conferences that took place in Armagh, Paris, London, Warsaw and Brussels.

After more than a year the “One-stop mobility shops” project is coming to an end.