On 17 June, the European Parliament voted in favour of legislation that could significantly change how new genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are regulated within the European Union. The outcome was a disappointment for the environmental, agricultural and consumer organisations campaigning to maintain existing safeguards around new genetic engineering techniques.
Regardless of the result, the issue successfully mobilised citizens across Europe. Over the last months, more than 200,000 people used a Proca-powered campaign run by a coalition of farmers and NGOs to contact their elected representatives. The coalition inspired citizens to send nearly 5 million emails to Members of the European Parliament. That’s public engagement at a truly European scale.
But the mobilising success of the campaign also raised a question: what happens when so many citizens engage with a topic, that political institutions struggle to manage?
Years of mobilising across Europe
This latest GMO campaign was the culmination of years of organising by a broad coalition of more that 35 European environmental, agricultural and consumer organisations. Each group engaged supporters in their own language and national context while contributing to a common European effort.
At the centre of the ongoing debate is a European law proposal, which would weaken existing safeguards around new genetic engineering techniques (NGTs). One key thing that might change: European customers will have less information about whether there is genetically modified food in the products they buy.
Campaign supporters called on MEPs to reject the proposal and maintain existing protections around GMO regulation, including how genetically modified products are labelled and marketed. While Parliament ultimately voted to move forward with the proposal, the campaign demonstrated the scale of public concern around transparency, traceability and consumer choice in the food system.
With 200,000 citizens already involved, this was one of the largest coordinated citizen campaigns currently taking place in the EU. Proca’s innovative Mail-To-Target action tool is proudly powering up this mobilisation.
Giving citizens more control over who they contact
One feature that made this campaign particularly interesting is how it approached political targeting. Thanks to the geographical targeting used in all Proca action tools, supporters could choose which political parties or individual MEPs from their country they wanted to contact.
This created more intentional participation. Citizens were encouraged to think about who represents them, who they voted for, which political groups hold influence over the issue, and where their voice can have the greatest impact. As a result, a single participant may end up sending messages to dozens of representatives.
Across the campaign, nearly 5 million emails were delivered to MEPs, sent by more than 200,000 citizen participants.
For us, this shows the power of collective action, and that people care about what they eat. For parliamentary offices, however, it created a real challenge.
When is success a problem?
Many MEP offices have received thousands of messages through the GMO campaign. The sheer volume of emails in parliamentary inboxes made it difficult for MEP offices to process the messages – much less respond to each and every one of them.
“Our office received over 10,000 emails about the GMO campaign. We can see that the topic is very important to many people, but that number is overwhelming” – told us one EP assistant.
Parliamentary offices need ways to understand the scale of public support or outcry, while still being able to identify messages that require individual attention – and respond to those citizens in a meaningful way. In an inbox overflowing with campaign messages from concerned voters, unique individual concerns might easily get lost.
It’s clear that the European Parliament’s institutional email system was never designed for this type of participation.
Now campaigners find themselves in a familiar paradox. Citizens are encouraged to participate in democratic processes, but when participation reaches significant scale, institutions often lack the tools needed to engage with it effectively.
We’re testing a different approach
This mismatch is one of the reasons we at Fix The Status Quo have been developing Circular Democracy.
Circular Democracy is a new initiative designed to help bridge the gap between large-scale citizen participation and institutional responsiveness.
Rather than treating campaign emails simply as messages arriving in an inbox, the platform helps parliamentary offices understand, manage and respond to public engagement more effectively.
In June, we’ve launched a first beta test of the Circular Democracy platform, involving several MEP offices. Participating MEP offices received access to a dedicated inbox, which automatically identifies campaign emails, groups similar messages together, and allows MEPs to prepare responses that can be sent to participating citizens.
Importantly, the system makes clear the scale of public engagement. Offices can still see how many citizens have contacted them and track participation levels. The goal is not to hide mobilisation, but to make it manageable. At the same time, MEP offices remain able to review and respond individually to messages that require personal attention.
Learning directly from parliamentary offices
Six MEP offices participated in a beta test of Circular Democracy during the GMO campaign. Together, we were exploring how parliamentary offices can manage large volumes of campaign emails – while seeing the full scale of citizen participation, and being able to respond meaningfully to their constituents.
People are more likely to stay engaged when they receive acknowledgement that their action mattered, and understand how elected representatives respond to the issues they care about.
That is the vision behind Circular Democracy: not simply helping institutions manage volume, but creating stronger feedback loops between citizens and decision-makers.
What happens next?
Although the vote did not deliver the outcome campaigners had hoped for, the mobilisation is not yet over.
The coalition behind the campaign is now turning its attention to the implementation of the new rules and to ongoing efforts to protect transparency, traceability and consumer choice within the European food system. The campaign also helped strengthen cooperation among organisations across Europe and demonstrated that large numbers of citizens are willing to engage on complex agricultural policy issues when given accessible ways to participate.
For us at Fix The Status Quo, the campaign also provided a valuable real-world test of Circular Democracy.
Whether a campaign wins or loses, democratic participation does not end when a citizen clicks “SEND”.
The challenge remains the same: ensuring that institutions can understand, process and meaningfully respond to public engagement at scale.
The GMO campaign may have concluded, but the questions it raised about citizen participation, institutional responsiveness and democratic feedback loops remain highly relevant for future European campaigns.