diff --git a/pr_testing/_helper_functions.sh b/pr_testing/_helper_functions.sh
index f330971cb0a0..516ee0c678a2 100755
--- a/pr_testing/_helper_functions.sh
+++ b/pr_testing/_helper_functions.sh
@@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ function get_cached_GH_JSON (){
         # TODO retry if curl fails do to external glitch
         >&2 echo "Downloading PR ${PR}"
         for i in 0 1 2 3 4 ; do
-            ${CMSBOT_PYTHON_CMD} -c "import github_utils,json;data=github_utils.get_pr('${REPO}', '${PR_NR}');print(json.dumps(data))" > ${GH_JSON_PATH} || continue
+            PYTHONPATH=${PR_TESTING_DIR}/..${PYTHONPATH:+:$PYTHONPATH} ${CMSBOT_PYTHON_CMD} -c "import github_utils,json;data=github_utils.get_pr('${REPO}', '${PR_NR}');print(json.dumps(data))" > ${GH_JSON_PATH} || continue
             echo ${GH_JSON_PATH}
             break
         done
diff --git a/pr_testing/merge_cms-bot_pr.sh b/pr_testing/merge_cms-bot_pr.sh
index 981dfb014d97..c96df4fa2538 100755
--- a/pr_testing/merge_cms-bot_pr.sh
+++ b/pr_testing/merge_cms-bot_pr.sh
@@ -5,7 +5,6 @@
 # Constants
 SCRIPTPATH="$( cd "$(dirname "$0")" ; pwd -P )"  # Absolute path to script
 CMS_BOT_DIR=$(dirname ${SCRIPTPATH})             # To get CMS_BOT dir path
-export PYTHONPATH=$CMS_BOT_DIR:$PYTHONPATH
 PR_TESTING_DIR=${CMS_BOT_DIR}/pr_testing
 source ${PR_TESTING_DIR}/_helper_functions.sh    # general helper functions