In the future, Irish citizens will be able to send petitions to the Parliament in Irish or indeed any other language that it officially recognised by a member state - both indigenous languages and languages of immigrants such as Punjabi. The only proviso is that they will have to provide a translation in an official EU language.
Parliament's Petitions Committee, which receives these complaints, has achieved a number of successes in the last year. A British teacher for example, complained that the French authorities were forcing him to undergo a retraining course before he could teach in France. This led to the Commission initiating action which forced the French government to amend its legislation to allow other EU nationals to teach in France without undergoing retraining.
In another case two other British petitioners complained that they had been wrongly advised by their bank and as a result they took out a loan and pension policies that were unsuitable for their needs. They questioned the appeals procedures in the UK for this type of dispute and as a consequence the Commission examined the general problem of self-regulation of the financial services sector and the need to protect consumers. Its examination highlighted the lack of appeal mechanisms for clients against banks, and it will put forward a code of conduct on the issue and will monitor its implementation.
These are just some of an increasing number of complaints about bureaucratic problems affecting people living and working in the new Europe that have been sent to the European Parliament.
Since 1987 it has been the task of the Committee on Petitions to consider these requests for action. The Maastricht Treaty enshrines the right of petition and Parliament and other EU institutions have a corresponding obligation to guarantee the effective exercise of that right. The Amsterdam Treaty in its turn has the general effect of strengthening the concept of European citizenship, including the right of petition.
This month MEPs debated the annual report of the Committee, in a year when it received 1,312 petitions, of which it considered that 582 complied with the rules - the vast majority of these came from individuals. Most of these were forwarded to the Commission with a request to supply information. It is customary for the Commission to then follow up the matter with the member state and if necessary to bring an action before the Court of Justice. The Court may rule that the member state has failed to comply with one of its Treaty obligations and will instruct it to do so.
The debate showed strong support from MEPs for the work of the Petitions Committee, and speakers such as Liam Hyland (Leinster, UFE) stressed how it broke down the barriers between the EU and its citizens. However, they noted that the number of cases being brought before the Committee showed that there was still much work to be done. Mary Banotti (Dublin, EPP) spoke of the problems of children who had been abducted abroad from one parent by an estranged partner. She had achieved some success through the Committee but stressed that her work still faced many difficulties, as a number of member states did not comply with The Hague Convention rules on rights of access.