EP committee hears MEP Bela Kovacs to assess suspending immunity

Brussels, May 6 (MTI) – The European Parliament’s legal committee on Wednesday heard MEP Bela Kovacs, of the radical nationalist Jobbik party, behind closed doors in a case involving the potential suspension of his immunity but did not decide whether it would suggest this to the EP plenary.

Last year Peter Polt, Hungary’s public prosecutor, asked EP president Martin Schultz to suspend Kovacs’s immunity on suspicion that the Jobbik politician spied against European Union institutions.

The Constitutional Protection Office raised charges against Kovacs on suspicion that the lawmaker had regularly met Russian diplomats covertly and paid monthly visits to Moscow, the paper said, adding that this is the first time that a request has been made to lift the immunity of an MEP in connection with state secrets.

On his way out after the hearing, Kovacs said he did not want to hide behind his immunity, adding he had cooperated with the committee.

Before the hearing, he told the press that he had received documents from the Hungarian chief prosecutor’s office on Tuesday, and some of the statements in these were false. Commenting on a report in the Hungarian media about his alleged links to the Russian secret services, he said it was mainly the case of “a journalist’s soaring imagination” and threatened to launch legal proceedings once the ongoing case is concluded.