Brussels, 15/06/2011 (Agence Europe) - When it is “unconnected to the activities of the (European) Parliament”, the conduct of an MEP does not amount to an “opinion expressed in the performance of the MEP's duties” and so is not be covered by parliamentary immunity.
That is the view that Advocate General Niilo Jääskinen puts to the Court in the opinion delivered on 9 June in Case C-163/10 responding to the Tribunale di Isernia (Italy), which was hearing criminal proceedings against Aldo Patriciello, an Italian member of the European Parliament who was being prosecuted for falsely accusing a local police officer of forging documents during an altercation over a parking space. The European Parliament, taking the view that Patriciello had “merely commented on facts in the public domain” and had acted in the general interest of his constituents, decided in 2009 to defend his immunity. The Italian court asked whether, through his false accusation, Patriciello had expressed an opinion in the performance of parliamentary duties that may be covered by parliamentary immunity (MEPs may not be subject to any form of inquiry, detention or legal proceedings in respect of opinions expressed or votes cast by them in the performance of their duties).
The advocate general says that “parliamentary immunity extends to every possible form of parliamentary activity” (written documents, speeches, voting, in all forms) both within and outside the Parliament's buildings. However, to determine the activities outside the precinct of the Parliament for which parliamentary immunity can be brought into play, he proposes linking immunity, not to the content of the MEP's remarks but, instead, to the relation between the context in which those remarks were made and the work of the Parliament. A distinction, he says, has to be made between, on the one hand, “the hard core of parliamentary business” (opinions expressed and votes cast within the Parliament, in committees, delegations, political bodies and political groups, and also taking part, as an MEP, in conferences, missions and political encounters outside the Parliament itself) and, on the other, activities surrounding it. While, for the hard core, parliamentary immunity is always appropriate, where there is no obvious link to a parliamentary activity, the advocate general suggests the application of the principle of proportionality: the further an act or speech of an MEP departs from the hard core of his/her duties, the more overriding the reasons that might justify the operation of parliamentary immunity must be. Along the same lines, an MEP may not invoke the parliamentary immunity established by the Protocol on the Privileges and Immunities of the European Union for anything done “in his capacity as a national, or regional or local, politician”. Acts forming part of political debate in general or of statements falling within a purely national or local context may not, in the light of the organic criterion, be covered by parliamentary immunity, the advocate general says. (F.G./transl.rt)