Proposition 54K3542

Projet de loi relatif aux pétitions adressées à la Chambre des représentants.

General information ¶

Authors

CD&V Franky Demon, Vincent Van Peteghem
Ecolo Gilles Vanden Burre
Groen Kristof Calvo
LE Catherine Fonck
MR Emmanuel Burton, Gautier Calomne
Open Vld Patrick Dewael
PS | SP André Frédéric
Vooruit Monica De Coninck

Submission date

Feb. 12, 2019

Official page

Visit

Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

petition

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

Groen CD&V Vooruit Ecolo LE PS | SP DéFI Open Vld MR PVDA | PTB

Voted to reject

∉ N-VA PP VB

Party dissidents ¶

• Peter Luykx (CD&V) voted to reject.

Contact form ¶

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Discussion ¶

April 24, 2019 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

Sandrine De Crom, rapporteur, refers to the written report.

Mr De Roover has the word in the general discussion.

Mr. Speaker, my discussion will only concern one point of the present bill. The purpose of the proposal is to encourage the participation of citizens in parliamentary work and to encourage citizens to act "feeding" for our work. The N-VA is completely behind it.

Apart from professional politicians, society can never give enough input in doing and leaving politics. Thanks to social media and the low-threshold communication that we all enjoy today, we – I speak for everyone – get approximately daily input from the population and for this one doesn’t even have to walk around the market in campaign mode. That is a positive thing.

That this in this proposal can also result in a treatment in Parliament is, of course, in itself also something that we are 100 percent behind and which deserves and receives our support. However, in addition to the aspect addressed by Mr Degroote in the committee, which concerns privacy and which should have been paid a little more attention, there is one point that I would like to point out because it is extremely disturbing in the proposal.

In fact, it upholds the principle that a question of 25 000 citizens should give rise to a parliamentary treatment. This makes the petition right in his old dress somewhat upgraded. It is given more meaning.

The strange thing is – and I have already pointed out this in the committee months ago – that it is not just about 25 000 citizens who sign a petition. Those 25 000 citizens must also live well and live in the three regions through a certain distribution key. This specifically means that, if a Limburger submits a proposal to establish an appeal court in Hasselt tomorrow and 50 000 Limburgers sign his request, this request will not be handled here in accordance with the provisions of the law because they only live in one province. Those 50,000 Limburgers will not get their petition to our banks, while 25,000 signatures under another petition, including enough Flemings, Brussels and Wales put their signature, will suffice for a parliamentary treatment.

This is an incomprehensible and very strange discrimination. Why are 25 000 citizens not equal to 25 000 citizens, since that is what is formally set out in this proposal?

Mr. Speaker, colleagues, we will continue to support this bill if you want to approve my amendment. My amendment aims to eliminate the distribution of the necessary number of signatures across the three regions so that any proposal with sufficient capacity, regardless of where the persons concerned live and in whatever proportion, would be treated equally in this Parliament. I think this is the only decent way to make that civil involvement play full play.

If our adjustment is not approved, we will of course vote against this bill because it constitutes a formal discrimination and I think we should be careful about it.

Mr. De Roover, I have not received an amendment yet, but I understand that this is the way it comes.

Are there any other members asking for the word on this issue?

You should have already received an amendment from me.

It is indeed so.

I have another concern that coincides with the legitimate objections expressed by colleague De Roover. You know the history of this proposal.

It is now a second version. I had already raised the same concern in an amendment when this proposal was put on the table for the first time. I am pleased that it has come to the progressive understanding that this is a reason to vote against, that no additional grinders should be introduced. There are already enough grinders in Parliament, so no one needs to be built in order to get proposals into Parliament.

I see colleague De Roover the eyebrows frons when I speak of progressive insight. I can only conclude that when this proposal was first on the table, it was submitted by Mr. Brecht Vermeulen who then apparently had no objection to that restriction, which already existed at that time. I then submitted an amendment and only then came the progressive understanding.

I have submitted a similar amendment to this version. As rightly stated, 25 000 citizens are 25 000 citizens. You gave the example of a Limburg subject.

I do not know whether you are still bound by the community shutdown, but I can still think of some other suggestions. If, thanks to the right of petition, for example, the division of social security or the cessation of money transfers to Wallonia are to be discussed in this Parliament, then a minimum number of Wallonian and Brussels votes on those petition lists should not be needed.

I have submitted an amendment on a second case. The current formulation states that persons who have a residence in Belgium can sign a petition. This means that the right to petition is opened for Belgians and foreigners residing in Belgium, possibly even illegals, since the latter also have a place of residence in Belgium. This is also unacceptable for us for two reasons.

First, political decision-making in this country must be reserved for persons who are citizens of that country in the true sense of the word, who have, in other words, the Belgian nationality.

Secondly, with the current formulation, Belgians residing abroad are excluded from the right of petition, contradictory to what has happened in that area in recent years, since Belgians abroad were granted voting rights on almost every level of elections, which makes it logical for us that this also applies to the right of petition.

In my amendment, I propose to rework the wording into petition rights for persons with Belgian nationality rather than for persons with a residence in Belgium. In a second point of my amendment, I refer to the muilkorven by the fact that a new Belgian grendel is introduced on a Flemish majority, thereby preventing community-sensitive topics from being subject to the right of petition. We do not participate in that.

Mr De Roover, you do not need to submit an amendment, because your concerns have already been included in our amendment. You only have to press the green vote button tomorrow to get it in order.

Mr. Speaker, we are degrading this beautiful proposal by making it an opportunity for a community debate. This does not have to be. On the contrary, at this end of the legislature, we must say to ourselves that there is an increasing aspiration of the population for a democracy that is truly participatory. The right to petition is one example, but it is not the only one. In the articles to be revised of the Constitution, there have been specific proposals so that at the level of the Senate in particular, one can organize to hear the citizen’s word, so that there can be referendums of citizen’s initiative. I believe that this participatory democracy should have this chance to flourish. We must put aside the community problems that would undermine the importance of citizens’ speech.

Therefore, I do not believe that it is useful to “slip” this proposal by community bustles.

Mr. Speaker, in the Committee on Internal Affairs, we have repeatedly pointed out that this is a chaotic and very cracky proposal.

It is stated here that we are merely entering the community tour, but that is not true. There is not only the example of Limburg. It may also be that, for example, the population of Brussels is tired of the riots and the damage caused by them, no longer agrees with the operation of the police and therefore wants to file a petition. Well, I cannot imagine that the people of Brussels should then appeal to Flamingen or Walen. The assertion that the file was primarily Flemish community loaded is therefore completely incorrect.

Mrs. Pas asked who the text applies. That is a legitimate question. Is the text only applicable to Belgians or to others? This question was also asked in the committee. Collega Van Biesen responded there: it is only about those who are registered in the population register.

Who is registered in the population register? These are all those who have their place of residence here. But in addition to the population register, there is also the waiting register and the foreign register. When colleague Calvo spoke in the discussion, it turned out that he had the right to petition for whoever opened.

In this regard, something has not been clarified. If at any time a petition is submitted, signed by 25 000 natural persons whose place of residence is unknown or whose place of residence is unknown or whose place of residence is unknown whether they are registered in the population register, the register of foreigners or the waiting register, it will constitute a first debacle.

In short, the proposal will be a dead-born child.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to point out that the statement that we put forward in our amendment states that 25 000 Belgians, wherever they live, are equal to 25 000 Belgians. I find it very appealing that Ms. Onkelinx suddenly refers to community debates. It is just our intention to get rid of it. I also do not understand exactly how she, as a socialist, can justify the introduction of formal discrimination.

We are not going to start! We just talked about Brussels and I could explain how, in Brussels, in order for this Region to be fully bilingual, we have put in place very strong mechanisms of protection of the minority. This is normal and does not pose a major problem. It should not be that participatory democracy can break these protections of living together.