Diana speaks at London University's King's College European Society

9.00.00pm GMT Fri 2nd Feb 2007

As a part of the European Week organised by the European Society at King's College, London, Diana Wallis MEP spoke to students and members of the public on Friday 2nd February.

Diana spoke of her disappointment that Article 47 on Citizen's Initiatives in the EU Constitutional Treaty had been caught up in the uncertainty surrounding the future of the Treaty. She said:

"A lot of people are champing at the bit to start the process for a variety of different citizen's initiatives. However there is no proper mechanism to receive these and won't be until the Constitutional Treaty is revived or until the Commission takes this on as a separate item."

Diana went on to mention the work of the European Parliament's Petitions Committee of which she is a member.

"The Petitions Committee has become the outlet for people with a range of individual and collective grievances. Of course, the oneseat.eu campaign ended up at the table of the Petitions Committee but this was deemed not to be the right outlet. It made it clear to me that we need a framework and rules even if the EU Constitutional Treaty founders again. It is just not good enough to tell over 1 million people - in the case of the oneseat.eu petition -that we are not going to listen to you."

Note

The oneseat.eu petition gathered over one million signatures in support of the assertion that the European Parliament should be located in a single location, i.e. in Brussels