MPs will return to assembly hall on December 15

As no parliamentary sittings were held this week, the MPs will meet three times a week the next weeks – on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. The decision was made at the meeting of the Parliament's Standing Bureau on December 11, Info-Prim Neo reports. One of the major subjects that will be discussed next week is the draft state budget law for 2010, which is to be approved in three readings. The MPs will start discussing it on Friday, December 18. Meanwhile, the parliamentary commissions are examining the draft state budget law. Another issue will be the approval of the budget of the Parliament's Apparatus for 2010, which is over 37 million lei, down 12 million lei from this year. The Communist MPs expressed their dissatisfaction with the Speaker's daily allowance, which is two times higher than that of the MPs. “You set the allowance. I live by your rules,” Speaker Mihai Ghimpu said. The MPs also said that the travel expenses of 700 euros per person are too high. Mihai Ghimpu replied that the sum was planned, but the costs will be those that will be. “You flied once to Brussels and got no result,” Communist MP Grigore Petrenko said, also in reply. At the end of the meeting of the Standing Bureau, Mihai Ghimpu said the MPs who will miss three parliamentary sittings a month will be deprived of premiums for the winter holidays. Former president of Moldova Vladimir Voronin, the leader of the Communists Party, is the MP that misses most of the sittings.