“We value our democracy, and freedom of expression is a fundamental right. So we will never prevent petitioners from speaking in front of MPs if their petition has gathered the 4,500 signatures required to hold a public debate. That is the principle of petitions, and there would be no point otherwise,” said Nancy Arendt (CSV) after the meeting of the parliamentary petitions committee, of which she is the chair.

The committee's members met by video conference on Wednesday 2 February to evaluate public debates and related procedures. “We have already said how well the modern petitions system works, and that some public debates have had a real impact on the country's politics, such as the debate on the legalisation of cannabis, or on the third party payer system,” she added.

But what particularly brought these issues to the fore in the petitions committee was one of the last public debates held in the House . Many had praised Luxembourg on social networks for ‘daring’ to give a voice to experts who have a different opinion to the established consensus.

“We will work to give a framework to these public debates. I myself am sometimes too kind, and I do not limit the speaking time of petitioners, as I do of MPs,” Arendt said. The idea is therefore to define a set speaking time, “and above all that it should be the petitioner who is the spokesperson for his or her petition, that he or she speaks first and is not replaced by 'experts’.” At the time, Pirate party MP Sven Clement commented that  “the petitioners themselves [had] been taken hostage.”

“And on our side we also have our experts and our figures to refute the untruths,” added Arendt. The petitions committee is expected to finalise its revised rules of procedure for public debates before the summer, and will now meet every Wednesday to discuss the issue.

This article was originally . It has been translated and edited by Delano.