Ilaria Salis saved by one vote as European Parliament rejects lifting immunity

Brussels – A tense vote, by secret ballot, was resolved as in the most classic of film scripts. Ilaria Salis is safe by one vote: the European Parliament rejected the request to lift her immunity with 306 votes in favor and 305 against. The Italian MEP, accused in Hungary of assaulting neo-Nazi militants, will thus continue to benefit from the protection of the House. 

“This vote is a victory for democracy, the rule of law, and anti-fascism. This decision shows that resistance works. It shows that when elected representatives, activists, and citizens defend democratic values together, authoritarian forces can be confronted and defeated,” Salis said from Strasbourg. The vote confirms the opinion – and the proportions – of the Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) of the European Parliament, which had voted to maintain immunity by 13 votes to 12. 

Yet, in the morning, ECR Conservatives and the European People’s Party had confirmed their intention to support Budapest’s request and send her to trial. Nicola Procaccini, co-chairman of the European Conservatives and Reformists, said that “the European Parliament is not the place to run away from court rulings,” while Manfred Weber, leader of the EPP, made it a legal issue: “Salis committed a crime before she became a Member of Parliament,” he said, and, therefore, “it is right to lift her immunity.” Indeed, the institute of parliamentary immunity guarantees that MEPs can freely exercise their mandate and ensures “the independence and integrity of Parliament as a whole.”

Numbers in hand, in the secret of the ballot box, 17 preferred to abstain, and 92 did not participate in the vote. Thus, the 306 in favor in the progressive bloc, in addition to the members of The Left, Greens, S&D, and Renew, brings the total to 310, which was enough. Thus, defections in the conservative wing of the European Parliament were probably decisive. Procaccini and Carlo Fidanza, both from Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia party, spoke on the sidelines of the vote of “a humiliation for Italy” and “for us as politicians who are not here by chance, while Salis is only here to escape a trial for acts of violence.”  The Fratelli d’Italia delegation would have voted the same way even in the case of Péter Magyar, the primary political opponent of Orbán and a European People’s Party MEP accused in Hungary of corruption and theft, who the European Parliament also shielded.

For Nicola Zingaretti, head of the Democratic Party delegation, “The vote confirms that there is much work to be done in this Parliament, and there is room to win and defend Europe and its values.” His colleague Brando Benifei emphasized that “it is not a matter of defending one person but the right of all to a fair trial not conditioned by declared and unacceptable political pressures.”

Salis, who spent 15 months in pre-trial detention in Hungary and was dragged in chains to the preliminary hearings, has repeatedly denounced the relentless persecution by Viktor Orbán’s sovereignist government against her. Even today, as she left the courtroom, she stated that “you cannot get fair trials in Hungary either against anti-fascists or against any political opponents.” Salis then reiterated her demand “that the trial be held in Italy with respect for democratic guarantees.” And that the European institutions now deal with another young anti-fascist activist, Maya T, “detained in shameful conditions and subjected to a farce trial where she is dragged in chains like a beast.”