EFFECTS OF THE RIGHT OF PETITION IN THE EUROPEAN UNION
EFFECTS OF THE RIGHT OF PETITION IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

Summary/Abstract: Various expressions of the right to petition can be found throughout Europe's political history since the Middle Ages. Within the European Union, the right to petition is now enshrined in Article 44 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, even though it has already been recognised by the European Parliament and enshrined in the treaties for a long time. That 'fundamentalisation' of an existing right raises interesting questions as to the effects of that process on the legal nature and scope of the rights in question. The case-law of the General Court and, more recently, of the Court of Justice on that right provides, clarifies and makes it possible, in particular, to observe that, in where the right of petition is above all a right of a procedural nature, a substantive movement is in the workplace. Finally, the right of petition is at the heart of the 'democracy-fundamental rights-control of the judge' triptych, which today expresses itself in the form of a procedural democracy in which citizens assert their rights whose guarantees in turn influence democratic functioning.

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