On September 30, 2015, the General Court of the European Union decided that a European citizens’ initiative (initiative) to allow the cancellation of onerous public debt could not be registered as its subject-matter does not have any basis in the European Treaties. According to the press release, the EU Treaty allows citizen to propose initiatives to the EU legislature regarding the implementation of EU treaties after submitting the initiative proposal to the Commission for registration and collecting one million signatures from at least a quarter of all EU states. The Commission can refuse registration if the subject-matter “manifestly falls outside the framework of its powers to propose a legal act to the EU legislature.” Mr. Anagnostakis, a Greek citizen, had started an initiative seeking to introduce “‘the Principle of the “state of necessity” [whereby] [w]hen the financial and the political existence of a State is in danger because of the serving of the abhorrent debt the refusal of its payment is necessary and justifiable’” into EU law and cited Articles 119 and 144 (economic and monetary policy) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) as its legal basis. The Court agreed with the Commission’s assessment that it is not empowered to introduce such a principle of debt cancellation to the EU legislature. The Court addressed Article 122 TFEU, finding that neither the provisions regarding measures of solidarity between member states nor the ad hoc financial assistance permitted after natural disasters or exceptional occurrences can be relied on to justify the initiative. Finally, it clarified that Article 136 TFEU was not an appropriate basis for the initiative because “[t]here is nothing to suggest that the aim of the adoption of the principle of a state of necessity would be to strengthen the coordination of budgetary discipline or would fall under economic policy guidelines, especially as the ability for a Member State to cancel unilaterally its public debt would conflict with the freedom of the contracting parties under Article.”