Skopje, 8 November 2022 (MIA) – Parliament Speaker Talat Xhaferi said Tuesday’s meeting of the working group on new Rules of Procedure within the Jean Monnet process mainly discussed the adoption of laws in regular procedure. Xhaferi said he scheduled the meeting on November 2, adding that the previous one was postponed at the request of VMRO-DPMNE and he doesn’t know the reason why they and the Levica representative didn’t attend the meeting. “This working group should work towards reaching as many solutions as possible for a consensually established Rules of Procedure, which should be adopted at the fourth Jean Monnet Dialogue, to be held in the established format with the presence of three MEPs,” said Xhaferi. Tuesday’s meeting has focused on rewiewing Articles 132 to 166 of the Rules of Procedure, with those attending proposing that deadlines provided under the Articles be further specified and given an alternative in cases of exceptions, Xhaferi said. According to him, under the current situation, the work of the current working bodies is placed above the competence of the plenum. “This means that the plenum depends on the work of the working bodies and therefore the idea is to overcome a situation if a working body purposely refuses to perform the work that is set forth by the Rules of Procedure, and there must be an alternative which the Parliament as a legislative body can take to be able to perform its function,” Xhaferi said. Today's meeting of the working group was attended by all representatives of all parliamentary groups except VMRO-DPMNE and Levica, as well as advisors professors Vlado Popovski and Jeton Shasivari. Xhaferi said he didn’t know the reason why VMRO-DPMNE and Levica didn’t take part in today's meeting, but some of their advisors were present and took notes to convey what has been discussed, and they will be provided with notes from the meeting. “What we discussed today will be presented to them as views and if they want to give their thoughts they can also do it in writing. The idea is not to avoid the participation of the opposition. The bottom line is that they didn’t say anything on resuming the meeting after it was postponed at their request. I could not wait forever on whether they would inform me or not and therefore I had to convene today's session,” said the Parliament Speaker. The working group on the Jean Monnet process was established by a decision of the Parliament and its members include the deputy speaker of the Parliament, coordinators and deputy coordinators of the parliamentary groups and representatives of the political parties in the Parliament, which are not organized in parliamentary groups – deputy speakers Misovski and Ismaili, coordinators and representatives of the parliamentary groups from SDSM, DUI, VMRO-DPMNE, NSDP, Alternativa, and Alliance for Albanians, BESA and Levica, and the chair of the Committee on Rules of Procedure and Mandatory-Immunity Issues. The group held working meetings on March 1, 2021, then the second meeting on March 15, 2021, and the third one was in the form of a working weekend in Mavrovo on May 7 and 8, 2022. This is the working group’s fourth meeting.