So, in Ukraine we have three separate petition sites (to president, to government and to parliament) but petition to president are the only popular and somewhat known one. From time to time people make a popular petitions there (usually, asking to pass some law, or avard a medal to some soldier more recently).
When petition gain 25 000 people who signed it, it is statutory must receive feedback from president. Unfortunately, they usually get ignored and it had become a sort of meme when Zelensky’s reaction to various petition basically are “I will ask prime minister to look into issue” and that’s pretty much all.
Is it different in your country?
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In Finland we have “Kansalaisaloite” or translated something like “Citizens Initiative”
50 thousand signatures in a month and the Parliament will have to consider it
Yes, to various UK bodies:
* Petitions to UK Parliament and Government – https://petition.parliament.uk/.
* Petitions to the Scottish Parliament – https://petitions.parliament.scot/
* Petitions to the Welsh Parliament / Senedd Cymru – https://petitions.senedd.wales/
Unfortunately there is no Northern Ireland Executive, but there isn’t a petition system for Northern Ireland’s devolved government even if it was up and running.
We have, it’s called ‘het burger-initiatief’ (citizens initiative), whereby a person needs to collect 40.000 signatures for a petition, and then parliament is obliged to discuss and vote on that topic. But only if it the topic is something parliament can legislate on. Obviously there are a few more details, conditions and ‘if’s and but’s’, but that is the gist of it. As far as I know, parliament takes it seriously, which is not to say they will vote in favour of it.
Yes, there is. It’s called “inicjatywa obywatelska” ( ” citizen’s initiative” ) and is a form of petition to the Polish Parliament.
Any project that is signed by at least 100k citizens could be presented to the parliament and potentially voted into the law. Practically, the vast majority of such projects is voted out by MPs during the first hearing.
The signature collection is quite popular. There’s always some either pro- or anti-abortion groups collecting signatures for the new project of the petition they’d created.
The right of petition is stipulated in Art 17 of the Basic Law: “Every person shall have the right individually or jointly with others to address written requests or complaints to competent authorities and to the legislature.”
Due to Germany’s federal structure, this also includes the legislatures of the German states. A legislature can of course only react to petitions in what is within its own competence.
On the federal level, 11 667 petitions have been submitted to the Bundestag in 2022. They are then looked at by the Peitions Committee of 32 members, which makes its recommendations on the petitions which are then confirmed by the plenary without debate.
There’s a few petitions that have been successful resulting in new laws for example, but most of them are not. The process is also quite lengthy: the relevant ministries are often consulted, with the Petitions Comittee replying to their answer causing another answer… sometimes going on for months or years, there is a [nice SPIEGEL article](https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/bundestag-petitionsausschuss-bearbeitet-jedes-jahr-tausende-von-buergeranliegen-a-3acdbfc3-4868-4839-a260-4bbf1b84ae6f) on the work of the Petitons Committee (paywalled, in German). They can be sent to relevant ministries, if succesful, “for consideration” (this is the highest level), “to be taken into account” or “as material” or plain and simply referred to the government or the parliamentary groups.
If a petition has gathered 50 000 signatures for example on the Bundestags [online plattform](https://epetitionen.bundestag.de) the Committee will invite the initiator to present his petition in person.
There is a system called Iniciativa Legislativa Popular (Popular Legislative Initiative). It requires a relatively large number of signatures, from memory I think it is in the low hundreds of thousands.
Parliament only has the obligation of debating popular legislative initiatives, so there’s that.
With 100’000 signatures you can literally force the government to hold a national vote on a new article in the constitution that you wrote (it must already be in it’s final formulation to collect the signatures). If more than half the votes are in favor: we’ve got a new article in our constitution. This is called a national initiative.
With 50’000 signatures you can literally force the government (both legislative and executive branch) to not implement a new law they wanted to pass. Instead they have to hold a national vote, their law anly passes if more than half the votes are in favor. This is called a national referendum.
Both of these options are also available on cantonal (think state) and municipal level, but obviously with lower signature thresholds.
tl;dr: Two options:
Initiative (100’000 signatures) to have a national vote on a law that you have written.
Referendum (50’000 signatures) to stop the government from implementing a law of theirs, unless it can pass a national vote.
Yes. manabalss.lv is a website in Latvia where you can petition both the parliament aswell as local municipal governments to intoduce changes to laws and regulations. But it’s not a guarantee that passing the threshold will actually change anything as the parliament can just vote it down.
We call it a “Volksbegehren”, “people’s wish” or “request”. If it follows the process and gets 100.000 signatures, it has to be discussed in parliament.
It’s a complete farce. Not only does the parliament practically ignore them, con men use them to make money. You have to pay some fees to start a Volksbegehren, if it’s successful, you get up to 5x the fees paid back. So you can earn a cool 10k if you do it right.
So, you just start one with some bullshit topic that everyone agrees with (“for better animal rights” or something).
Or, even better, start two with opposite goals, on a controversial topic, where both sides will want to participate (pro/against smoking laws or neutrality), so both are successful and you make double the money.
In Italy at the national level there is a system called ‘referendum abrogativo – repeal referendum’. If 500k signatures are reached, if the Constitutional Court deliberates that the proposal doesn’t violate the Constitution, a popular vote will be held to repeal entirely or partially a law passed by parliament, but it will succeed only if more than 50% of the total eligible voters cast their votes and the majority is for the repeal option. The two most famous referenda of this kind were initiated by conservative groups to repeal the laws allowing divorce (1974) and abortion (1981). Both failed miserably. There are some limitations on which kind of law can be repelled by popular initiative, most importantly fiscal/budgetary laws and laws ratifying international treaties are excluded from it (so no Italexit referendum is possible, unless the Constitution is changed).
It exists, and we call it borgerforslag (citizen-proposal). If you achieve 50.000 signatures of people with voting rights (so basically only Danish citizens can sign), it will be presented to parliament. That said, I can’t recall petitions ever really going anywhere. I think your time will be better spent on campaigning in the media or protesting with like-minded people to get a proposal noticed by politicians
We do not at least, not in the same sense. There is no system of petition to either Parliament or the government or the Monarch. Where they just have to give feedback.
Although we do have Citizens Suggestions on local and regional levels, although it does vary. Not all municipalities and regions have citizens’ suggestions. But most do IIRC. The municipality or regional council has to review it and decide what to do. It could be anything from suggesting to put up more street lights or fix the roads or anything. Obviously, no law changes, tho because they can’t legislate. There is a way to petition for local referendums too. Which is happening in one municipality atm actually. Although if 2/3 of the council vote against the petition it isnt held.