Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-06-12-Speech-1-069"
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"en.20060612.15.1-069"2
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"Mr President, when trying to convince their electorate of the importance of the role of Parliament, many MEPs must have heard the resigned reply: ‘Brussels is too far from here!’. Unfortunately, this opinion is also reflected in the statistics that show decreasing vote participation rates in EP elections, cycle after cycle.
‘Brussels is too far from here!’ I also heard these words from forty Hungarian fire-fighters, who came all the way to Brussels about one year ago, travelling by coach for three days, to submit their petition in person, in the Parliament building. Brussels was far for them, too, but only geographically. They spoke with confidence, hoping that their petition concerning the regulation of their working hours would be successful.
Their petition was among the first petitions received from new Member States. However, the report tabled before us shows that the number of such petitions is very low, which leads to the conclusion that further efforts are required to inform citizens of new Member States.
Still, we are not aiming to increase the number of petitions just for the sake of it. Our aim is to ensure that the right of petition is embedded in European consciousness, both in old and new Member States. The Cashman report correctly points out that this would be useful to the operation of the European Union, because petitions constitute a valuable source of information on the implementation of European laws, bringing to light the deficiencies of the enforcement process, as seen by the everyday European citizen.
The practice of the past eighteen months also indicates that there have been numerous petitions in the area of environmental protection, social security or even the internal market, which may be of assistance in perfecting certain European Union directives.
In the hope that this process will continue, I thank Mr Cashman for his work, and naturally, I support the adoption of the report."@en1
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