Parliament passes ruling party’s bill on reducing number of committees to 9

The Parliament passed the bill on reducing the number of permanent committees from 12 to 9. 64 MPs voted in favor, 9 against, and 4 abstained. At the same time, the Parliament refused the opposition bloc Yelk’s proposed bill, under which it suggested the Parliament to have 10 committees.

The bloc’s MPs opposed the ruling party’s bill under which the human rights and public affairs committee would merge with the state and legal affairs committee, and proposed to create a separate human rights committee.

The bill suggests the creation of the following committees: Healthcare and Social Affairs (11 members), Foreign Relations (10 members), Science, education, culture, youth and sports (11 members), European Integration (10 members), Defense and security affairs (11 members), State-Legal and Human Rights Protection Affairs (15 members), Territorial administration, local self-governance, agriculture and nature protection affairs (11 members), Economic Affairs (11 members), Financial-Credit and Budgetary Affairs (11 members).