Member of Parliament Alexandra Attalidou has sent a letter to House President Annita Demetriou, requesting to represent the Volt party in the legislative body, which she joined after its establishment.
As previously reported, Ms. Attalidou recently left the parliamentary group of the Greens, continuing as an independent. In her letter, she essentially seeks to function as a party representative, but the initial response from the Parliament is negative, referring to the relevant article of the Constitution defining parliamentary parties.
Simultaneously, according to our sources, legal advice on the matter has been requested from the Legal Service.
According to the Parliament’s response, political parties or parliamentary groups are those that participate with candidates in the respective general elections for the selection of members and the occupation of the corresponding number of parliamentary seats.
These parties, as stated, become parliamentary parties if they secure the prescribed electoral percentages in the first and second distribution of seats, entitled to recognition as political groups in the House of Representatives with enhanced rights compared to other parliamentary parties if they gather at least twelve percent (12%) of the total number of representatives.
“In line with the above, no independent member, after joining a political party that has not participated in the last general elections with the number of candidates as a combination of a party or as a coalition of cooperating parties, can claim to represent such a party in the House, and such a party is not represented in the House by the specific methodology,” it is mentioned.
Ms. Attalidou also indicated that, following her departure from the Movement of Ecologists-Citizens’ Cooperation, she is now considered an independent member with the rights of independent members, according to the Rules of the House, regarding decisions and parliamentary practice.
In the Parliament’s response to Alexandra Attalidou, it is noted that the departure of a larger number of members from the same party in the House is viewed differently, as in such a case, if the departing members collectively declare, they automatically form another “group of members” within the House, but with no more rights than those of individual independent members.
