Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-06-12-Speech-1-070"
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"en.20060612.15.1-070"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to congratulate Mr Cashman on his report and I support the recommendations that he is proposing in order to increase the efficiency of our Committee on Petitions.
I would like to add a couple of comments. Firstly, I regret that many Members of this House are unaware of the work done by our Committee on Petitions, only taking notice of it on the odd occasion when it is dealing with a complaint involving their region. Its work, however, is a fundamental mechanism in relations between Parliament and the citizens. The confidence of the citizens, not just in this House and in their representatives here, but in the European Union in general, often depends on the efficiency of that mechanism. That is why I am calling upon the Members of this Parliament to take more interest in our Committee on Petitions, since it is theirs.
My second observation is also about seeking greater efficiency, in this case in order to prevent what I believe to be a misuse of that Committee. This is the main platform available to European citizens and citizens’ associations for communicating their complaints regarding alleged infringements of Community legislation to Parliament. Members, on the other hand, are provided by this House's Rules of Procedure with various ways to act in such cases. It therefore seems to me to be anomalous that Members of this Parliament can register complaints that are then dealt with in the European Parliament’s Committee on Petitions.
I do not question our right as citizens to address complaints to Parliament, but the practice seems to me to be politically incorrect and is sometimes used for the purposes of agitation. It seems to me to be ethically unacceptable for Members to register a petition and then to pass judgment on it themselves in the Committee on Petitions. Furthermore, this situation seems dubious on a legal level. We in the Socialist Group in the European Parliament are therefore presenting an amendment which I hope the House will support and which recommends that Members leave it to citizens to initiate such procedures, while we ourselves go through other channels provided for in the Rules of Procedure.
I shall end by congratulating the Members working in the Bureau of the Committee on Petitions and the excellent officials working for Parliament and for the political groups who, on a daily basis, make it possible for us to make progress with our work. Over many months I have witnessed the work they have done during the extremely long procedure, which fortunately is now resolved, to allow the Don Quijote airport project in my province of Ciudad Real, in Spain, to go ahead. Furthermore, from my involvement in that debate, I was able to see the Committee on Petitions operating efficiently to ensure that the work of our Parliament contributed to things being done properly."@en1
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