Plenaire vergaderingen EP: Sacharovprijs, meerjarenbegroting en Oekraïense verkiezingen (en)

With two plenary sessions in Strasbourg, the announcement of this year's Sakharov Prize laureate and a Facebook chat with the leader of the Socialist Democrat group in parliament, this week looks packed. MEPs will vote on the budget for 2013 and outline how they think the EU i's long-term budget should look, as well as giving their feedback on the EU summit in Brussels on 18-19 October.

During the plenary on 22-23 October, MEPs will look at the EU's budget for next year as well as the long-term budget for 2014-2020. Passenger rights and the implementation of the Single European Sky project will also be discussed.

During the plenary on 25-26 October, MEPs will take an initial vote on rules to curb food price speculation and high-frequency trading on financial markets ahead of talks with member states and call for more focus on growth during the "European Semester" economic policy coordination.

On Friday, political group leaders will decide the winner of the 2012 Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought. On the shortlist are Belarusian Ales Bialiatski, Russian punk band Pussy Riot and Iranians Nasrin Sotoudeh and Jafar Panahi.

On Thursday there is the chance to question Hannes Swoboda, who took over as the leader of the Social Democrat group a few months ago, during a Facebook chat from 1400 CET.

Finally, an EP election monitoring delegation will be in Ukraine for the parliamentary elections on Sunday.