Reminder : Facebook may lead to democracy, not ipso facto to a republic State of Rights

As demonstrated in Tunisia, Libya or Egypt, electronic social networks may accelerate the sharing of undesirable information and of justified anger without guaranteeing the upheaval leads to a republic State of Rights.

At the other top of the democratic spectrum, lies the old system of formal petition that has been recently extended to Europe.

Its virtue is to address societal issues that a remote legislator ignores.

Petition can be addressed to the EU legislator once it gathers one million of European signatures.

At the time of the negotiation of this principle by Member States in 2010, negotiators sincerely believed that collecting such an amount of signatures would be difficult and would de facto create a filter on the number and the seriousness of petition.

Electronic social networks in the meantime changed this reality. The creation of a genuine "European public space" -that has so many times been called by citizens, politicians and intellectuals for years- is now in the hands of petitioners.

Clich here to read recent comments of the vice-president of the EU Commission on this issue.