We discuss the current developments by the European Twisted Mass Collaboration in extracting parton distribution functions from the quasi-PDF approach. We concentrate on the non-perturbative renormalization prescription recently developed by us, using the RI$$ scheme. We show results for the renormalization functions of matrix elements needed for the computation of quasi-PDFs, including the conversion to the $overline{rm MS}$ scheme, and for renormalized matrix elements. We discuss the systematic effects present in the $Z$-factors and the possible ways of addressing them in the future.