EP received 1655 citizens' petitions in 2010

The environment and fundamental rights continued to be of most concern to EU citizens petitioning the Parliament in 2010, according to the Petitions Committee's annual report, drafted by Spainish MEP Willy Meyer of the GUE/NGL group. EU citizens are increasingly turning to electronic petitioning, with 63% opting for an online application rather than mailing a petition.

Among the issues raised: misleading company directory scams, breaches of EU environmental law, failure to recognise professional qualifications, demands for better food labelling, the waste crisis in Italy's Campania region and discrimination over Austrian ski pass prices for citizens from elsewhere in the EU.

A slow start for petitions

The report is due to be voted in Committee on 14 June and in plenary on 4 July. Ahead of the coming into force in 2012 of the citizens’ initiative, which will allow citizens to band together to demand changes to EU law, and the European Year of Citizenship in 2013, we look at one of the cornerstones of European citizenship.

Citizens wishing to draw attention to failures in applying EU rules can turn to the Parliament, via a written request, or petition, calling for action. The first petition came in the first year of the Parliamentary Assembly in 1958 and was a Dutch request for compensation for damages caused by a scrap metal fraud. The assembly had to wait until 1964 for the second petition and until 1974 there were never more than 10 a year.

52% of petitions admissible

However, as the EP's power has grown, so has the number of petitions. There were 1,655 individual and collective petitions in 2010, 52% of which fell within the scope of EU competence. The EU often receives petitions concerning national issues over which it has no competence or that should more properly go to the European Court of Human Rights.

More than half the petitions concerned Spain, the EU as a whole, Germany or Italy. German and English were the most frequently used languages and most petitions were filed by Germans, Spaniards, Italians, Romanians and Poles. Estonians, Slovenes and Slovaks were the least active petitioners.