Hungarian MPs’ lawsuits rejected by ECHR
The European Court of Human Rights has ruled inadmissible and rejected the lawsuits of three Hungarian lawmakers, Bernadett Szél, Ákos Hadházy and Szabolcs Szabó, who turned to the court over cuts to their salaries as a punishment for their conduct during plenary sessions of parliament.
Lawsuit rejected
Then LMP group members Szél and Hadházy, and independent lawmaker Szabó turned to the court saying that the penalties imposed on them were infringements on their right to the free expression of opinion, and that they had no adequate legal redress in Hungary. They said the decision itself and the lack of redress violated Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights.
According to the rulings, Hadházy was penalised because of a banner he held up during a plenary session of parliament in May 2017, when Szél asked a question ahead of the agenda on advertisement costs of electricity provider MVM and the upgrade of the Paks nuclear plant. The banner contained pictures of the beneficiaries of public procurements and the sums of monies won. They were called on to remove the banner as they had not asked for permission to use one ahead of the meeting but refused to do so, decision 27307/18 of the ECHR said.
According to another lawsuit (80686/17), Szél and Hadházy were hit with another fine because they held up sheets of paper to the cameras with the inscription “He’s lying” during the speech of a ruling party MP’s on migrant quotas on November 20, 2017.
The third lawsuit (48725/17) was related to the fine imposed on then independent lawmaker Szabolcs Szabó, who sounded a siren during parliament’s vote on amendments to the higher education law on April 4, 2017.
According to a statement of parliamentary press chief Zoltán Szilágyi, the three-person council of the ECHR handed down binding rulings in all three cases.
The council ruled that the lawmakers’ conduct was contrary to the procedural regulations of parliament, and that they all appealed to parliament’s immunity committee and later to parliament itself, asking those bodies to overrule the original decision of the speaker of parliament. Parliament upheld Speaker Laszló Kövér’s decision in all three cases, the statement said.
The ECHR said it had ruled that the plaintiffs’ claim that the committee ruling had been biased was unfounded, Szilágyi said.
The ruling said that the decision to curb the lawmakers’ right to free expression was lawful as it had aimed to ensure the order of parliament and to protect the rights of other lawmakers. Since the plaintiffs had failed to prove that they had no lawful means to express their opinions in speeches or amendment proposals, the ECHR deemed the fine to be “necessary and proportionate”, Szilágyi said.
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