The European Parliament’s legal affairs committee is preparing for a closed-door session on Tuesday, September 23rd, that could determine whether Hungarian opposition leader Péter Magyar —a Member of the European Parliament (MEP)—will finally face criminal proceedings in Budapest.
The case has already exposed the extent to which Brussels’ liberal elites are prepared to go to protect one of their own.
Three separate requests are currently pending for the suspension of Magyar’s parliamentary immunity.
The first stems from an incident in June 2024, when the Tisza Party leader seized a mobile phone from a man recording him during a late-night altercation at a nightclub in Budapest, before throwing the device into the Danube.
In September 2024, the chief prosecutor’s office asked the European Parliament to lift Magyar’s immunity. If he is found guilty of theft, he could face up to two years in prison.
A second request, reportedly linked to a defamation suit launched by a politician from conservative Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party, followed in November.
A third was filed this year by the Central District Court of Pest in connection with a private prosecution brought on the initiative of the right-wing Mi Hazánk movement.
All three landed on the desk of European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, who referred them to the legal committee.
More than a year later, still no decision has been made. The hearing into Péter Magyar’s immunity case should have been held in June of this year, but left-wing and mainstream forces seem to have deliberately delayed it.
Fidesz MEP Tamás Deutsch, speaking on Hungarian public radio on Monday, September 22nd, claimed the delays are deliberate.
He can only escape criminal prosecution by clinging to parliamentary immunity, and in this effort he has found allies in the European People’s Party’s coalition partners and in EPP leader Manfred Weber, who are prepared to protect him.
Deutsch described Magyar as a “captured man” beholden to his Brussels “mentors and handlers.”
The rapporteur handling the case, Polish left-wing MEP Krzysztof Śmiszek, is himself a controversial choice. A former deputy justice minister in ex-EPP president Donald Tusk’s government and a long-time LGBT activist, Śmiszek has faced accusations from Hungarian conservatives of dragging his feet to ensure Magyar avoids prosecution.
This procedure is in striking contrast with the swift lifting of immunity of right-wing MEPs such as Poland’s Patryk Jaki and Germany’s Petr Bystron.
Political analysts see the affair as part of a wider struggle between Hungary’s nationalist government and Brussels.
Zoltán Kiszelly of the Századvég Foundation said the outcome of Tuesday’s vote is virtually predetermined: “If the European People’s Party takes this line, then the Social Democrats, Liberals, and Greens will also vote the same way. All this is no longer about the truth.”
For Viktor Orbán’s allies, the suspicion is that shielding Magyar, who has styled himself and his party as a Europhile alternative to Fidesz, serves a strategic purpose.
In a recent interview with europeanconservative.com, Ágoston Sámuel Mráz of the Nézőpont Institute pointed out that Magyar has openly aligned himself with EU leaders favouring continued military support for Ukraine. “If Tisza were to win, the most likely scenario is that they’d pledge loyalty to the current EU leadership and act accordingly,” Mráz warned.
Also on the committee’s closed agenda for Tuesday are the cases of Italian left-wing activist MEP Ilaria Salis, facing trial in Hungary over her involvement in violent antifascist attacks, and Klára Dobrev, leader of the Hungarian opposition neoliberal Democratic Coalition.
Their immunity hearings, like Magyar’s, will test whether the European Parliament applies its own rules consistently—or selectively.
