European Parliament votes to protect Peter Magyar’s and Ilaria Salis’ immunity

The European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI) voted secretly on Tuesday to protect the parliamentary immunity of MEPs Peter Magyar, Ilaria Salis, and Klára Dobrev - all sought by Hungary’s judiciary for different charges. 

By contrast, the committee voted to lift the immunity of Polish MEPs Michał Dworczyk and Daniel Obajtek.

The final decision for each of the five MEPs will now be taken by a plenary session of the Parliament in Strasbourg, slated for the second week of October.

Peter Magyar’s case was controversial, as three requests to lift his immunity were issued by Hungarian authorities, one for alleged theft and two for defamation.

The first related to allegations that Magyar threw a man's phone into the Danube River after arguing in a Budapest nightclub with someone filming him. 

The rapporteur for this case, the Polish Socialist MEP Krzysztof Śmiszek, drafted a report suggesting the immunity be protected, which was approved by the JURI Committee.

The other two reports, drafted by Polish Conservative MEP Dominik Tarczyński and French far-right MEP Pascale Piera, suggested lifting Magyar’s immunity, but the Committee disagreed.

Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has also reacted to the vote. “Today in Brussels it became clear that the leader of the opposition is Brussels’ man. And he wants to be a governor here at home”, he wrote in a post on Facebook.

According to multiple sources from the Parliament, the tightest vote related to the request to lift Ilaria Salis' immunity. An Italian lawmaker from The Left, Salis stands accused in Hungary of assault and for beating two far-right militants.

“It was a very good signal... I am very faithful in my colleagues for the Plenary’s vote,” MEP Salis told journalists after the vote.

She said she doesn't want to escape justice, but for her case to be heard in Italy, to avoid what she considers “persecution” by the Hungarian authorities.

Rapporteur Adrián Vázquez Lázara, a Spanish European People’s Party MEP, recommended accepting the request to lift Salis’ immunity, but his fellow MEPs voted to reject the report. 

The vote was held in secret, and the result was not revealed, but several sources told Euronews that Salis' immunity was preserved by 13 votes to 12.

“It was a political decision, not based on the Parliament’s rules,” Vázquez Lázara told Euronews after the vote, adding: “If the request to lift immunity is finally rejected, Hungarian authorities may have recourse to the EU Court of Justice, and they would probably win."

Reports recommending waiver of the immunity of Conservative Polish MEPs Michał Dworczyk and Daniel Obajtek, both penned by French Green MEP David Cormand, were approved, according to several sources from the JURI Committee.