Brussels, 22/07/2014 (Agence Europe) - According to Advocate General Jääskinen, decisions adopted by the European Parliament's petitions committee may not be challenged before a court. In an opinion adopted on Thursday 17 July in a case pending at the European Court of Justice (C-261/13 P), the Advocate General stated that this principle must apply to any decision declaring a petition inadmissible, irrespective of a decision made by the General Court that deemed the opposite.
According to the case-law of the General Court, the action taken by the Parliament pursuant to a petition declared admissible is not subject to review by the EU courts, since the Parliament retains full political discretion in that regard. By contrast, the assessment as to the admissibility of a petition must, still in accordance with the case-law of the General Court, be subject to judicial review, since such review is the only guarantee of the effectiveness of the right of petition granted by the Charter of Fundamental Rights.
Hearing an appeal against a judgment of the General Court applying that case-law: a former official of the European Parliament addressed a petition to the European Parliament in respect of his staff report for 2005. The petitions committee declared his petition and so could not be challenged in court. On this basis the General Court decided that the appeal by the interested party was inadmissible. The question put to the European Court of Justice is therefore to establish whether legal jurisdiction can be exercised over the positive or negative decisions of the EP committee with regard to the petitions sent to it.
In his opinion, Jääskinen proposes that the Court responds in the negative and does not uphold the case-law mentioned above. According to the Advocate General, the decisions of the petitions committee cannot be challenged in court and legal control on these decisions must be ruled out. He also argued that petitions law constitutes a political tool that allows democratic interaction between citizens and elected representatives that must not be subject to intervention by judges. The EP is obliged to introduce mechanisms that allow petitioners to exercise this right according to efficient procedures and that only the existence of these mechanisms and their effective functioning can be the subject to control by the courts in the context of an appeal if effective procedures prove lacking and if it transpires that the Parliament has seriously and persistently breached the right of petition by refusing, for example, to admit petitions or failing to answer them. (FG)