欧洲的干细胞科学家现在终于松了一口气。欧盟委员会已经决定否决170万公民关于立法禁止开展人类胚胎干细胞研究的请愿。

从事干细胞治疗亨亭顿病研究的意大利米兰大学干细胞学家Elena Cattaneo说，这是欧盟作出的很好决定。但是提出这一请愿的组织One of Us在其网站上声明，欧盟委员会这一不正确决定有悖于民主程序。One of Us的请愿最早2年前就被欧盟公民倡议(ECIs)已经公开，这次请愿一共收集到了170万个签名，他们的宗旨是禁止人类胚胎干细胞的研究。欧盟委员会给出的关于否决情愿的解释是他们认为人类胚胎干细胞的研究对于科学和社会的发展都是至关重要的。

请愿者认为欧盟委员会的这项决定与之前欧盟法院2011关于人类干细胞使用的判决相矛盾。但欧盟委员会认为这项判例不适合于研究性人类胚胎干细胞的使用。

欧盟公民倡议(ECIs) 欧盟公民倡议（EU Citizens' Initiative）是一项旨在让普通人参与欧盟立法环节的机制。为了让欧盟的五亿公民能够深入参与立法环节，欧盟于2012年修订了相关条款并出台了欧盟公民倡议机制，给予公民对任何议题进行提案的权利。提案的前提条件是提案者能征集到来自28个欧盟国家中至少7个国家的100万个签名，不过这并不保证这项提案可以通过立法。

The petition was among the first to be presented within the Commission’s new European Citizens’ Initiatives (ECIs) scheme, launched two years ago in a bid to widen participatory democracy. The ECIs have drawn criticism for their potential to be exploited by pressure groups wishing to reopen recently closed debates. (Nature‘s editorial pages joined the critics: see ‘The democracy carousel‘.)

Any ECI that can muster more than 1 million signatures across at least seven European Union countries automatically triggers a parliamentary hearing and a formal response from the Commission.

The parliamentary hearing for the One of Us initiative took place on 10 April.

Today the Commission published its reasoning for not proposing new legislation. It said that the EU Council of Member States and the European Parliament had last year debated the issue thoroughly, and no new information was available to warrant a return to the debate so soon. At the time, member states and parliament both agreed that stem-cell research held great promise for currently incurable diseases such as Parkinson’s disease, and it was thus in the public interest to support it. They also agreed that human embryonic stem cells are still sometimes required in such research.

In its statement, the Commission further pointed out that its funding rules already preclude active destruction of new embryos and require strict oversight of experiments.

The petitioners had referred to a 2011 judgement of the European Court of Justice, which ruled that patenting of inventions involving cells derived from human embryos was illegal. But the Commission said that ruling did not apply to research.