European Union President Herman van Rompuy will make an official visit to Malta on July 10, during which he will also address Parliament in a special afternoon sitting.

The visit was announced by Government Whip Carmelo Abela at a House Business Committee meeting today.

The committee agreed on a schedule of sittings over the rest of this week and next week in order to cover a number of annual reports and financial estimates of authorities and public corporations. The debate on the Whistleblower Bill will start on Wednsday next week.

Mr Abela confirmed that the Government is working on a number of amendments to Standing Orders, a draft of which is expected to be passed to the Opposition.

One major change in the pipeline will be the timing of parliamentary sittings, with a proposal to start from 5pm to 8.30pm, Mondays to Fridays. Sittings are currently between 6 p.m. and 9.30 p.m., Mondays to Wednesdays.

Opposition Deputy Leader Mario de Marco cautioned that such a change would create pressure on both employee-management relations and professionals, for whom it would be a peak time for seeing clients. Since Malta had no full-time MPs, it was already a great sacrifice to balance careers with Parliament.

Mr Abela countered that although the point was valid, the Government’s main aim was to enhance family time in a small way with decent homecoming times – a small family-friendly measure for MPs and parliament employees.

Another of the Government’s amendments to the Standing Orders would be to allocate the Opposition a number of sittings for which it could set the agenda. This would be apart from days for Private Members’ Bills.

Another amendment would be to give people the right to present petitions directly to the Speaker.

As he had promised at an earlier sitting of the committee, Speaker Anġlu Farrugia handed each member a draft report on the new Parliament building, for discussion at a future date. He said the report was scientifically based on parliamentary work over the years, as well as the amount of space that would be needed in the new building.