Busy day for final House plenum

The House plenum on Thursday convened for the last time before its resolution ahead of parliamentary elections on May 30.

During this final session, the deputies will be called to discuss and vote on several bills including the state-guaranteed loans to the tune of €1 billion, and the first complementary state budget of the year.

Other important bills to be passed are one to establish the deputy ministry of social welfare, one setting up an independent authority against corruption, a law harmonising Cypriot legislation with the Istanbul Convention against violence against women and domestic violence and a law on protection from harassment and stalking.

It will also have before it a draft decision concerning the publication of the interim report of the committee investigating the naturalisations of foreign investors and their families.

The current House last October saw the resignation of its then president, Demetrios Syllouris and one MP, Akel’s Christakis Giovanni, after they were seen in a video released by Al Jazeera expressing willingness to help a Chinese businessman with a criminal record get a Cypriot passport. The businessman did not exist as the two, along with a lawyer, were set up by undercover journalists pretending to work for a wealthy man in search for a European passport.

The House will end its term with 55 MPs instead of 56 following a court decision deeming unconstitutional the filling of one of the seats by the Solidarity’s Giorgos Papadopoulos. He took the post as first runner-up after the party’s leader, Eleni Theocharous, who was elected in that post, refused it so that she could keep her seat at the European Parliament.