European Parliament immunity: ‘To my friends, everything; to my enemies, the law’

Few aphorisms better capture the spirit of our age of authoritarian liberalism than the one attributed to former Peruvian President Óscar Raymundo Benavides: “To my friends, everything; to my enemies, the law”. It is one of the oldest temptations of power: To employ the scales of justice not as an impartial balance, but as a tool for assaulting one’s enemies and a shield for protecting one’s friends. Once more the European Parliament has proved that it is not exempt from this vice. Actually, it is an increasingly professional offender.

The most recent and most obvious example is that of Péter Magyar, the Hungarian opposition politician wooed in Brussels as a would-be saviour against the national leader most virulently loathed by the Eurocrats: Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. If polls are any indication, Magyar does have a shot at victory. For the Commission, this would be no small feat. Budapest, of course, is a thorn in the side of the globalist establishment within the EU’s institutions. On immigration, national sovereignty, or war, Orbán’s Hungary has long been a rare—and highly effective—beacon of resistance. Replacing Orbán with a man loyal to them—Magyar—is likely one of the most important political goals for the Commission in 2026.

But Magyar, a former Orbán aide and husband to one of his most famous ministers, Judit Varga, is hardly the ideal poster child of Brussels establishment. He’s a cantankerous man, and one who is prone to losing his temper. Last year, following the European Parliament election, he allegedly stole a man’s phone at a high-end Budapest discotheque and proceeded to throw it into the Danube river. Apparently the victim had been filming a heavily intoxicated Magyar. The rights and wrongs of the accusation should be left to the judges, but what is clear is that the charges are serious. In any decent democracy, they would come to trial—no politician, however famous, should be able to assault an ordinary citizen without consequence.

But in the European Parliament, politics prevails over principle. The suspension of Magyar’s immunity, scheduled in June, was regularly delayed. And when the chamber did finally confront the issue, the outcome was a foregone conclusion: His immunity was maintained. In simple terms, he was waived free from the usual course of law. Isn’t it great being the establishment’s darling?

Put this excess against the alacrity and speed with which the same Parliament waived Marine Le Pen’s immunity at the behest of the French judiciary at the mere drop of a hat. On whatever pretexts—misuse of EU funds or election finance scandals—the Strasbourg-Brussels system always moved in at the earliest. Immunity was never sacrosanct in her case. It vanished as soon as it became inconvenient to the political class.

Another case to consider is that of Ilaria Salis, the hard-left Italian activist arrested after allegedly brutally assaulting individuals during city riots in Budapest in 2023. While detained in Budapest, she was then elected as an MEP. The ink on her election certificate had barely dried when the European Parliament moved hastily to safeguard her, invoking immunity to block Hungarian prosecutors. To Brussels, Salis was not a rioting criminal but a heroine—a political asset to be defended at any cost.

Hypocrisy is deep-seated. In 2011, veteran German MEP Elmar Brok was accused of tax evasion for keeping €5,000 from a speech he did not report. Once again, the European Parliament closed ranks. Brok’s immunity was maintained. The episode is seldom remembered these days, but it exposed how brazenly those who serve the Brussels machine managed to have themselves shielded, even from the legal expectations of other citizens.

The trend is as clear-cut as possible. Immunity has turned partisan. It is a cloak of invincibility for establishment favourites. It is taken away from conservative or anti-globalist challengers with haste. The law is no longer blind. It peers keenly to ascertain whether the accused is a “friend” or an “enemy.”

This corruption of principle has profound consequences. It delegitimises European institutions in the minds of ordinary people, who instinctively recognise when justice is being fixed. It pollutes relations between member states, by making Brussels a censor of what prosecutions should proceed and what should be thwarted. And it undermines the very foundation of equality before the law, which is the cornerstone of any democratic system.

It is, of course, legitimate to hate Le Pen’s politics or to dislike Orbán’s Hungary. But the problem is larger than any single personality. The moment that parliamentary immunity ceases to be neutral, it is an act of tyranny: A perk for the insiders, a trap for the outsiders.

Péter Magyar’s immunity vote was not merely an Hungarian affair. It was an European embarrassment. It showed a Parliament comfortable with interfering in the judicial affairs of sovereign countries, as long as it is to the benefit of its pet protégés. And it reiterated yet again Benavides’ old adage: Everything to the friends of Brussels; the law to its enemies.