However, the petition’s author opted to cancel her appearance at the last minute, resulting in the debate being scrapped.
Tania Hoffmann’s petition, which demanded Luxembourg withdraw from the World Health Organisation and bring an immediate halt to negotiations on international health regulation amendments, garnered 4,733 signatures on the Chamber of Deputies’ dedicated petition website.
Once a petition crosses the threshold of 4,500 signatures, it is subjected to a debate in the Chamber. Although Hoffmann confirmed her attendance at Wednesday’s session in an email exchange on Tuesday, she later changed her mind and took to social media on Wednesday morning to signal that she did not intend to participate in the debate.
Ten minutes after the debate was due to begin, Chamber president Claude Wiseler told the assembled audience - which included health minister Martine Deprez, alongside other MPs - that the session would be cancelled.
The petitioner published an open letter to the press on Wednesday morning in which she explained her goal from the outset did not involve a ten-minute debate with MPs, committee members and the minister - although this is the procedure for all petitions debated within the Chamber. Hoffmann said the time set aside for the debate would be insufficient, and wrote that she also would have liked to have been invited to the session, rather than summoned.
Pirate Party MP Marc Goergen later said he could not understand this behaviour and that the people who had signed the petition had put their trust in the petition’s author to represent their interests at a debate. The goal of creating and signing petitions is to exert change and make something happen, he said. People who sign petitions therefore have certain expectations, and it was unacceptable for the petitioner to refuse a debate with Chamber representatives.
