Skopje, 27 October 2023 (MIA) — The debate over amendments to the Rules of Procedure that was to be held by the Parliamentary Committee on Rules of Procedure, Mandate and Immunity-Related Issues earlier on Friday has been adjourned for Monday at 2 pm for additional consultations, the committee chairman Pancho Minov told MIA.

Some 2,000 amendments were submitted to the Draft Rules of Procedure, mostly by the opposition party Levica but also by the parliamentary groups of VMRO-DPMNE, SDSM and Parliament Speaker Talat Xhaferi.

Amendment consultations between parliamentary groups started Thursday and have been ongoing.

Around 1,850 of the amendments were submitted by Levica. The party did not reveal why they had submitted so many and what they were trying to achieve. Their key amendments, sources said, were related to filibustering.

The committee hearing on the new parliamentary rulebook had been scheduled for 10 am, when it was postponed an hour and kept being postponed hourly.

Earlier, at a press briefing Thursday, Parliament Speaker Xhaferi said he expected that the new Rules of Procedure would be adopted by consensus and put to a vote at a session scheduled for Nov. 2.

The new Rules of Procedure will come into effect when the next Parliament is formed. The current parliament speaker will convene the constitutive session of the next Parliament. According to the new rulebook, however, the constitutive session cannot last more than three days.

The updates to the Rules of Procedure are the result of five years of talks between parliamentary groups that began within the Jean Monnet Dialogue Process mediated by several Members of European Parliament. mr/