The European Parliament on Tuesday rejected Hungary’s request to lift the parliamentary immunity of two MEPs, Peter Magyar and Ilaria Salis.
Magyar is a key opponent of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, while Salis, an Italian antifascist, faces charges in Hungary related to violence during a far-right neo-Nazi rally in Budapest.
The vote regarding Salis, a member of The Left group in the Parliament, was expected to be contentious.
Manfred Weber, the leader of the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), the largest group in the Parliament, had supported lifting her immunity, on the grounds that the alleged incident occurred before her election as an MEP.
The secret ballot resulted in 306 votes to maintain Salis’s immunity, 305 votes against, and 17 abstentions.
Following the outcome, Salis stated, "This shows that when elected representatives, activists, and citizens stand together for democratic values, authoritarian forces can be resisted and defeated." She renewed her call to be tried in Italy.
For Magyar, an EPP MEP and a prominent challenger to Orbán in next year’s elections, the vote was conducted by a show of hands.
Magyar faces allegations of theft after reportedly taking a man’s phone while being filmed in a nightclub, an investigation he has dismissed as "a sham."
In 2022, the European Parliament formally declared it no longer considers Orbán’s Hungary a democracy, instead labelling it an "electoral autocracy" due to ongoing assaults on judicial independence, public freedoms, and widespread corruption within the regime.
