The staff of the Hungarian daily Magyar Nemzet were insulted by employees of the European Parliament in Brussels in the EP building. A journalist from the paper asked the EP employee why he was following them, to which he received a surprising answer.
Hungarian journalists wanted to ask questions to MEPs leaving the meeting of the European Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee (JURI). They learned that at a background discussion in Strasbourg, there was a discussion about the amendment of the rules of immunity procedure. The aim of the proposed change is to allow immunity cases from a member state subject to a rule of law procedure to be suspended, thus preventing the hearing of applications for suspension.
The journalist of Magyar Nemzet asked the EP employee why he was following them, to which they replied that “they behaved badly last week” and if “they behave badly today”, they will be banned from the European Parliament. Moreover, the Brussels man even threatened the correspondents that he would send security personnel to them.
The MEP of the communist era, who had never heard of press freedom: “Either I accompany you or the security guards,” said the MEP employee, and then for a good half hour he lectured journalists who only wanted to do their job.
The EP employee who harassed the journalist of Magyar Nemzet did not budge even when they were told that they were not at any of the official or unofficial events of the EP last week, so they could not have been “misbehaving”.
Translated and edited by L.Earth