Parliament begins new session Monday, but with old problems

The spring session, the Kosovo Assembly, will begin with two sessions. The chairmanship has scheduled two plenary sessions Friday, one on 30, the other on January 31st. But the challenges the legislature will face will be the old ones. One of them, according to politician Ramush Tahiri, is the lack of quorum.

Kosovo's “Assembly, fundamental challenges are making quorum and voting laws coming from the Government. This is the fundamental one, because the coalition is fragile and is failing to have quorum”, Tahiri said.

The budget bill, 2019, is one of the first issues the Assembly will address at the January 31st session, while also the Bill on the Salat, since the PSD, has been provided to be reviewed in second reading, at once with the draft budget.

According to the Kosovo Democratic Institute, which monitors the work of the Parliament, even the Dialogue Bill, is another issue the Parliament should address since the start of the session. Blerta Aliu, from this institute, says the Assembly should return to regular work, not as it worked during the previous session.

The Assembly would have to restore the practice of holding sessions on Thursday, eventually on Friday, as it envisions setting up the Parliament's Work in order to give space to parliamentary commissions to hold their meetings other days and to develop a normal work process. Then the absence of MPs should be regulated through a new regulation of the Parliament's work”, Aliu has told Radio Kosovo.

In addition to laws, according to politician Ramush Tahiri, the Assembly at the beginning of the session must also face the last problems of citizens, as if the strikes were.

The “in the country should also shift parliamentary debate on the issue of strikes and on various problems facing society in Kosovo”, Tahiri said.

The January 30th session will be loaded with over 60 points of the agenda worn by the autumn session sessions. According to the Votraime.org platform, 42 percent of the legislative agenda was completed, adopting 75 laws out of 177 total. There are 56 bills in the procedure, while 46 are pending.