Macedonia Parliament Revamp Starts This Month

The project will cost €11 million and will be finished by 2012, Parliament Speaker Trajko Veljanoski informed reporters at Monday's press conference.

“During that time the parliament will function normally,” Veljanovski noted, with construction work to be carried out in several stages.

The reconstruction aims to upgrade the facilities for the 120 deputies. It is to include the structural strengthening of the historical building, a designated heritage site, as well as the construction of a fourth floor, and the addition of two side domes made of light materials covered in glass and one central glass dome above the main plenary hall.

The overhaul is part of the elaborate government project dubbed "Skopje 2014”, which aims to revamp the entire Skopje downtown area.
 
The government, led by the centre-right VMRO-DPMNE party, plans to spend several hundred million euros on the construction of at least 12 buildings and about 20 monuments to cover what it sees as drab architecture from the country’s socialist Yugoslav past.

The opposition Social Democrat party, SDSM, has strongly opposed the project, arguing that the revamp will be unnecessarily costly and utterly inefficient.