00949: Fwd: [d-europe] fwd: EU petition (1 million signatures)
From:
"Bruce Eggum" <bruce.eggum(at)gmail.com>
Date:
Fri, 26 Jan 2007 18:21:41 -0600
Subject:
Fwd: [d-europe] fwd: EU petition (1 million signatures)
Here is an example of an article which was not structured plainly and objectively. The other matter as I see it, the Initiative is not binding if accepted in the referendum. We must write workable processes which are understandable and do-able. Regards Bruce Eggum
... how an EU citizens initiative clause allowing for petitions can be made more secure after George W. Bush and Mickey Mouse apparently signed up to a recent campaign in favour of scrapping the parliament's seat in Strasbourg ... ... The citizen initiative is part of the EU constitution – technically politically dead since mid 2005 when it was rejected by French and Dutch voters ... [it] stipulates that if at least 1 million signatures are gathered on a topic from EU citizens then they can formally ask the European Commission to look into an issue. However, it does not stipulate how many member states the signatures should come from, and whether electronic signatures are admissable. These issues were thrown up during the Strasbourg seat campaign which saw over 1 million citizens sign up to an e-petition to house the parliament only in Brussels ... ... In the end the million-strong petition was rejected by the parliament on the grounds that it could not be proven whether all the signatories were resident in EU member states. The then MEP Cecilia Malmström, one of the main movers behind the campaign, was forced to submit it as an individual petition ... ... Now UK liberal MEP Diana Wallis wants to carry out a report looking into these problems. "We want to give some clarity on what is acceptable and what is not," she told EUobserver adding that she did not want citizens to come with a 1 million petition only to be told " 'go away, you've got it wrong' " ... But she and her colleagues in the petitions committee are running into opposition from MEPs in the constitutional affairs committee ...