The European Parliament adopted the resolution by Mr Felipe CAMISON ASENSIO (EPP-ED, E). This resolution calls for the legal and technical changes to be made to allow petitions to be submitted on the Internet. (Please refer to the previous text).The resolution emphasises that petitions keep the EU institutions in touch with the public and are a crucuial way of learning about the impact of EU legislation on the everyday life and ordinary people.
In future Parliament would like to use the Internet to a larger extent so that the members of the public can send not just their petitions but also the supporting documents in electronic format after some legal changes. MEPs also call on the Commission to devise ways of processing information and setting up databases which could be available to the public via the Internet. Parliament also wants attention to be devoted to the applicant countries.
Since 1985, when the current systems of petitions was introduced, more than 10 000 peititons have been received by the European Parliament. In the year covered by the report, the committee received 886 (compared to 958 the previous year), of which 510 were declared admissible. The issues raised related mainly to social affairs (101 petitions), the environment (77) and freedom of movement (27). The countries submitting most petitions were Germany (184), Italy (112), the UK (102) and France (100).�