How to send a petition to the European Parliament, step by step

A polluted river near your village, despite EU water rules. An airline refusing compensation you are entitled to. An authority ignoring an accessibility directive. If the problem concerns European Union law, there is a tool few Romanians use: a petition to the European Parliament. In 2023, Parliament received 1,452 petitions from across the Union.

Who can petition

Any EU citizen, as well as anyone living in a Member State or any organisation with its registered office in one. You can petition alone or together with others. The right is set out in Articles 20, 24 and 227 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and Article 44 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights.

What it can be about

Two conditions matter. First, the subject must fall within the European Union's fields of activity, such as the environment, consumer protection, free movement, passenger rights, equal treatment or data protection. Second, the problem must affect you directly, a condition Parliament interprets broadly.

Many petitions are rejected because they mix up levels. The European Parliament does not deal with matters that belong only to Member States, or to other organisations such as the Council of Europe, which the Strasbourg Court belongs to, or the United Nations. Nor is it a court: it cannot overturn a judgment.

Step by step

• Check the link to EU law. Find the directive or regulation that applies. One precise reference makes a petition much stronger.
• Write clearly and briefly. What happened, where, when, which EU rule you believe was broken, and what you are asking Parliament to do.
• Use any official EU language, including Romanian.
• Send it online, through the European Parliament's petitions portal, or on paper by post. It must include your name, nationality and address.
• Add documents such as photos, correspondence with the authorities or rulings, as attachments.

What happens next

The Committee on Petitions first decides whether the petition is admissible. If it is not, you receive the decision and the reasons. If it is, the committee can ask the European Commission for a preliminary investigation, refer the petition to other parliamentary committees, contact national authorities or discuss it at a public meeting, to which the petitioner, the Commission and the Member State may be invited. In some cases, the committee proposes a resolution voted on by the full Parliament.

Petitions are normally public, and other citizens can support them on the portal. If you want your name kept confidential, ask for it explicitly.

What you can realistically expect

A petition will not get you compensation and will not settle your case on its own. But it can create pressure, trigger checks by the European Commission and, sometimes, infringement proceedings against a State. For problems that affect many people, such as pollution, accessibility or a late-transposed directive, it is one of the few direct tools a citizen has at European level.