Hungary’s Parliament voted on Monday to lift the parliamentary immunity of three lawmakers, including the country’s prime minister, Péter Magyar, as prosecutors proceed with ongoing criminal investigations.
Prosecutors are investigating Magyar on suspicion of misdemeanor theft after he allegedly took a man’s mobile phone during a nightclub altercation and threw it into the Danube River in June 2024, nearly two years before his party won a landslide election that unseated former populist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
Magyar has denied that his conduct amounted to theft and called the case, which alleges damages scarcely exceeding $300, politically motivated.
He has also criticised prosecutors for requesting the lifting of his immunity at the same time as that of two former Orbán-era ministers, whose alleged crimes involved misusing tens of millions of dollars in public funds and accepting millions more in bribes.
Prior to the vote, Magyar told lawmakers that he had “not committed a crime, I take responsibility for all my actions.”
“Anyone who has nothing to hide comes forward openly,” he said, referring to his earlier request that his party vote in favour of lifting his immunity.
Immunity for members of Parliament, a common practice in European democracies, is designed to protect lawmakers from political persecution, allowing them to perform their duties and express opinions freely without fear of arrest or lawsuits from the government.
Hungary’s former government under right-wing Orbán had sought to have Magyar’s immunity lifted when he was a lawmaker in the European Parliament, but the body repeatedly refused.
Lawmakers on Monday also voted to suspend the immunity of two former ministers in Orbán’s government who are suspected of, separately, criminal mismanagement of 17.3 billion forints ($53.6 million) of public funds and accepting more than 12 billion forints ($37.2 million) in bribes and kickbacks.
