b) Article 2 of the TEU indicates as fundamental values of the EU the respect for human dignity, […] equality, […] and respect for human rights, and the EU Fundamental Rights Charter affirms in its Article 1 that “human dignity is inviolable” and in its Article 2 that “everyone has the right to life”.

c) the Union, when acting in areas that relate to the issue of human life, must base itself on clear criteria, which must, at least by virtue of a precautionary principle, not result in excluding the right to life of any human being from the protection guaranteed by the aforementioned Treaty provisions;

d) the recent judgment of the Court of Justice of the EU of 18 October 2011 in the case of Brüstle v. Greenpeace indicates with clarity that human life begins at the moment in which an ovular cell is fertilized, and excludes, in the name of human dignity, the patentability of any procedure implying or presupposing the destruction of a human embryo, by which term must be qualified any human ovular cell that is fertilized or, using the parthenogenesis procedure, induced to divide and develop;

e) in the light of a principle of coherency, the same criterion must guide the EU’s actions in all other areas of its competence wherever the protection of the human embryo comes into play;

f) such areas of EU competence include, among others, policies related to public health (Art. 6 (a) and 168 TFEU), education (Art. 6(e), 165, and 166 TFEU), Protection of intellectual property (Art. 118 TFEU), the funding of research (Art. 4(3), 180, and 182 TFEU) and development cooperation (Art. 4(4), 165, and 166 TFEU);

g) on the basis of the Treaties, and following a proposal by the Commission, the Union must adopt multi-year programmes for scientific and technological research (Art. 182 TFEU) and for development cooperation (Art. 209 TFEU);

h) the EU is a community of values, wherefore it is necessary to adopt legal norms guaranteeing that, wherever it acts within the remits of the competences conferred upon it, it does not act on the basis of what manifestly does not constitute a common value;

i) it must therefore be excluded that the Union lends any form political support to, and a fortiori that it finances, activities that pre-suppose or involve the destruction of human embryos;

l) the objective of this citizens’ initiative is to obtain with regard to all aforementioned areas a commitment of the Union to abstain from consenting to, and from financing, any activities that pre-suppose or involve the destruction of human embryos, and to put in place adequate instruments to control the use of the funds it spends in order to ensure that these funds are not used to destroy human lives.

m) it is suitable to insert this general principle into the financial rules that are applicable to the EU’s budget (Art. 322 TFEU);