The petition, this valuable democratic instrument within the blind spot of the French political system | EUROtoday

The cry of protest went across the nation. Launched on July 10, 2025 by Eléonore Pattery, a 23-year-old pupil, on the National Assembly web site, the petition calling for the repeal of the Duplomb legislation has amassed greater than 2 million signatures in lower than three weeks. Successful which led the Economic Affairs Committee to arrange a brand new dialogue within the National Assembly, scheduled for February 11 within the Hemicycle. A primary within the historical past of the V^e Republic.

The debate ought to however be quick for the signatories hostile to this legislation “aimed at lifting constraints on the profession of farmer”, promulgated on August 12, 2025: the process doesn’t present for both the group of a brand new vote nor the potential of modifying the legislative textual content. “The exercise is akin to a fairly symbolic tour of the track, which risks causing disenchantment, in the same way as the great debate [national, en 2019] and other participation tools which have not been followed up with effects », regrets the political scientist Simon Persico.

In the history of democracy, however, the collective petition has nothing of an invocation. Already present in Antiquity and the Ancien Régime, it was more like a complaint, before being recognized as a right in England in 1689, but always in the service of private interests.

A complement

It is the revolutionary period which consecrates the device as “an enforceable political right” of the citizen to intervene immediately in public affairs, underlines the political scientist Antoine Gonthier, writer of a thesis on the topic. The train have to be motivated by the final curiosity and never by private curiosity. It is then thought-about as a complement to the political rights of consultant democracy: to vote, to face for election, to militate in a celebration. This entails giving substance to the Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1789, when it specifies that residents can compete, “personally or through their representatives”to the development of legal guidelines. The precept is enshrined within the Constitution of 1791 and the Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1793.

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