Brussels, 07/07/2010 (Agence Europe) - Given the ever-increasing number of citizens' petitions submitted to the European Parliament, the latter on Tuesday 6 July recommended, in its adoption of the report by Carlos José Iturgaiz Angulo (EPP, Spain) on the deliberations of the committee on petitions in 2009, the creation of a portal providing an interactive multi-stage model for petitions. This tool would make it possible to let the citizens know what they can get out of submitting petitions to the Parliament, together with the areas of competence of the institution, and could include links to other European and national resources.
The EP stresses that a growing number of complaints made do not come under the sphere of European competence - 54% of the petitions the Parliament received in 2009 were therefore rejected. In order to do something about this, the MEPs are calling for the creation of a “user-friendly tool”. They have also proposed the creation of an electronic register to allow the citizens to express their support or to withdraw from a petition. The rapporteur stresses that this web portal would have to be a “one-stop shop”.
The EP is also calling for education to help the citizens to distinguish between petitions and the citizens' right of initiative, brought in by the Lisbon Treaty. Petitions express concerns regarding the infringement of EU laws, whereas the citizens' initiative is used to propose new EU legislation.
In 2009, the European Parliament received 1924 petitions, which related mainly to the environment (228 petitions), fundamental rights (164), justice (159) and the single market (142). Most of the petitions related to the EU as a whole (403), followed by Germany (298), Spain (279), Italy (176) and Romania (143). German is the most frequently-used language (548 petitions), followed by English (343), Spanish (237), Italian (203) and Polish (116). For the second year running, there were more electronic petitions than petitions sent by post. (J.I./transl.fl)