Petitioning the European Parliament: The Committee on Petitions as Gatekeeper to Citizen Interests

Each year, individuals and organizations across the EU submit hundreds of petitions to the EP’s Committee on Petitions. The Committee addresses each admissible petition by forwarding citizens’ concerns to the relevant parliamentary committee to take into account during legislative reform or by requesting the Commission to investigate the matter. In the latter case, the information obtained may contribute to the initiation or continuation of infringement proceedings against a member state. Because the number of petitions received by the Committee outstrips their ability to devote significant attention to each one, the Committee has considerable discretion regarding the petitions that it prioritizes. Given this need to prioritize, the potential outcome for policy development and enforcement that may result and the representative function of the European Parliament of which the Committee on Petitions is a part, the representativeness of the Committee’s activities is critical for understanding the representativeness of the European Parliament as a whole. The purpose of this paper is to examine and explain patterns in the prioritization of petitions by the EP’s Committee on Petitions and to assess the representativeness of these activities. This will be achieved through the creation and analysis of a new and unique dataset of the Committee’s activities from 2000-2010 which will show patterns in the considerations that predominate when the committee selects petitions to prioritize.