Not possible to accede to all citizen petitions

IN his letter headlined ‘Disinformation, omission and the politics of fear’ (May 2), Cllr Kieran McCarthy says my letter (‘Media should veto statements designed to spread disinformation,’ April 28) contains inaccuracies.

However, he fails to point out any such inaccuracies. The only claim he made was that I should have mentioned that a new citizens’ initiative petition will force the European Commission to consider submissions (which is a significant new development in itself), though not necessarily to ratify them.

There is no way the commission could responsibly accede to all petitions just because they had enough signatures to be considered.