Asked about the return of Social Democrat Union (SDSM) to normal work in the Macedonian Parliament, Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski said that it will be good for the SDSM representatives to begin earning their pay checks for a change.

"In the past 15 months they were collecting their salaries without doing any work. Enough is enough. No person in Macedonia has that kind of an arrangement. Let them start earning their pay checks", Gruevski said.

SDSM initiated a boycott of Parliament in April 2014, after losing the early elections, in which they claim they had unequal conditions for participating. Out of 34 members of Parliament elected on the SDSM led list, 31 refused to take up their seats, at one point even submitting resignations. The party decided to return to Parliament on Tuesday, after a political agreement brokered by European Commissioner Johannes Hahn provided for normalization of the political situation in Macedonia. The representatives collected an estimated 1, 4 million denars (23.000 EUR) each during the time they were absent from Parliament.

SDSM leader Zoran Zaev said that the return of his party to Parliament is conditional on further implementation of Hahn's agreement. Gruevski's VMRO-DPMNE party, in turn, responded with a long list of legal changes and laws it has put in place in the past 15 months.