A European Parliament committee is expected to recommend lifting the immunity of MEP Ilaria Salis next week, passing the case to the full chamber to decide whether to let the former anti-fascist activist face trial in Viktor Orbán’s Hungary.
Salis, was arrested in February 2023 at a rally in Budapest after clashing with far-right protestors and charged with taking part in an assault and involvement in an extreme left-wing organisation.
She spent over a year in a Hungarian prison under harsh conditions, and risks an 11-year prison sentence if judges follow the prosecutor’s demand. Her detention also sparked uproar across Europe after images of her shackled in court went viral.
The 40-year-old, who denied all the charges, was released when she won a seat in the European Parliament at last year’s elections, in a move engineered by Italy’s Greens and Left Alliance. While she is still facing charges by a Hungarian prosecutor, she enjoys parliamentary immunity – for now.
Next Tuesday, the Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) is expected to recommend lifting Salis’ immunity, according to nine Parliament sources with direct knowledge of the closed-door talks.
Within the JURI committee, both the hard-right European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) are so far aligned on removing Salis’ immunity, sources told Euractiv.
One person familiar with the debate, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that it was still “very tight” and that there were ongoing negotiations to secure Salis’ immunity, as even within the ECR and EPP, some might feel uncomfortable handing a win to Orbán.
Even if JURI backs lifting her immunity, the final decision rests with the plenary, which could still preserve Salis’ parliamentary shield.
Lawmakers from the Greens and the Left are already preparing to denounce Hungary’s rule of law record and accuse Orbán of weaponising justice against his critics, two MEPs and three sources from the Parliament said.
So far, the confidential report drafted by the EPP frames the decision as procedural, not political, two sources said. Yet few in Brussels see this as a purely technical case.
A far right vs far left emblem
Parliament President Roberta Metsola received Budapest’s formal request to strip her immunity one day after Salis tore into Orbán’s government and its looming Council presidency in a plenary speech in October 2024.
For Salis and her allies, the timing of the request was proof that the case was political.
In June this year, when the JURI committee postponed the immunity vote, far-right MEP Silvia Sardone, of the Patriots for Europe, said that it was “embarrassing to see that the Left is willing to do anything to prevent her from facing a trial.”
Italian conservatives in Giorgia Meloni’s ECR group have also kept up pressure, accusing the Left of shielding a violent extremist.
The Left, on the other hand, denounced “a sham trial, where Orbán has made it clear that her conviction has already been predetermined.”
The minute the file reaches Strasbourg later this autumn – likely during the first plenary in October, according to one Parliament official – the debate will test not only Salis’ fate but also the chamber’s willingness to confront Hungary and reckon with its own divisions.
Elisa Braun/Nicoletta Ionta Euractiv
Source: https://www.euractiv.com/news/parliament-braced-for-clash-over-far-left-mep-ilaria-salis-immunity/