LONDON’S Green MEP Jean Lambert has welcomed Londoners’ backing for a campaign that could see an end to the use of animals in research and testing anywhere in the EU.

The ‘European Citizens’ Initiative’ (ECI) will prompt action at EU level after it attracted more than one million signatures from around the Union – a milestone reached yesterday.

By reaching the one million-signature threshold, the ‘End Vivisection’ ECI becomes just the second to do so since the mechanism was launched in 2012: the first calling for water and sanitation to be recognised as basic human rights and essential public services.

Next the European Commission is required to organise a public hearing into the issue, which could see new legislation being drafted.

Organisers are calling for existing EU rules on animal experiments to be replaced with a new directive completely banning use of animals in research and testing – as has already been done for animal testing in the cosmetics industry.

Ms Lambert said: “Animal testing is not only cruel and completely unnecessary: it’s also a costly distraction from developing alternative safety tests and can be completely counterproductive and dangerous, producing results that just don’t apply in humans.

“Greens were delighted when the ECI process gave a direct voice in law-making to EU citizens in a bid to deliver on greater democracy.

“It’s great that the first such initiatives to be adopted relate to access to clean, safe, drinking water, and an end to the animal cruelty inherent in vivisection – both Green Party priorities.”