Brussels – The president of the European Parliament, Roberta Mestola, announced in the Strasbourg hemicycle that she had received a request from the relevant Hungarian authorities to waive immunity for Ilaria Salis. The AVS MEP, who spent 15 months in preventive imprisonment in Budapest on charges of assault against some neo-Nazi militants, commented, “At stake is not only my personal future but also, and above all, what we want Europe to be.”
The European delegation of Fidesz, the party of Viktor Orbán, anticipated the Hungarian judges’ request in the morning. The Salis affair has taken on a significant political connotation, particularly after the direct clash between the Italian MEP and the Hungarian premier two weeks ago in the European Parliament. “It is no coincidence that the request was transmitted to the Parliament on October 10, the day after my speech in the Plenary on the Hungarian presidency, when I harshly criticized Orbán’s actions,” Salis said in a press release, adding sarcastically, “Evidently, tyrants have a hard time digesting criticism.”
As Metsola explained in the House, the relevant parliamentary committee, the JURI Committee, will now examine the request. Salis will have the opportunity to present documents and be heard by the MEPs of the Legal Affairs Committee, who will then adopt behind closed doors a recommendation to approve or reject the request to waive immunity. At the first available plenary session, the European Parliament will vote by a simple majority.
“As I have already said several times, I hope that Parliament will choose to defend the rule of law and human rights without giving in to the arrogance of an ‘illiberal democracy’ in an autocratic drift which, also through the mouths of its own leaders, has already declared guilty me on several occasions before sentencing,” Salis continued in the note, stressing that “the minimum conditions for a fair trial to take place in Hungary do not exist.”
English version by the Translation Service of Withub
