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A senior conservative Hungarian politician abruptly introduced his resignation from the European Parliament after the police broke up a celebration he attended in Brussels as a result of it violated coronavirus restrictions.
Jozsef Szajer, a widely known determine within the right-wing Fidesz celebration led by Prime Minister Viktor Orban, confirmed on Tuesday that he had been on the celebration final week. He didn’t touch upon Belgian media descriptions of it as an orgy within the coronary heart of town’s gay-bar district.
The workplace of the Brussels public prosecutor stated in a press release that the police had intervened Friday after neighbors complained about noise and located 20 individuals in an house. Two of them invoked diplomatic immunity, it stated.
“A passer-by reported to the police that he had seen a person fleeing” the scene, the prosecutor’s assertion stated. It stated: “The person’s palms had been bloody. It’s attainable that he could have been injured whereas fleeing. Narcotics had been present in his backpack.”
“The person was unable to provide any id paperwork,” the prosecutor stated. “He was escorted to his place of residence, the place he recognized himself as S. J. (1961) by the use of a diplomatic passport,” the prosecutor stated. That matches Mr. Szajer’s initials and yr of start.
Mr. Szajer denied that he had used medication that evening.
Mr. Szajer enjoys immunity from prosecution underneath the protections of the European Parliament, the European Union’s elected legislative physique.
“The information reported within the Belgian press a couple of non-public celebration in Brussels on Friday, I used to be current,” Mr. Szajer stated in a press release shared by the European Folks’s Social gathering, the coalition of European conservative events that features his Fidesz. He additionally posted the letter on his private web site, which crashed quickly after it went up.
Mr. Szajer went on to say that the police had requested him to establish himself however that he had not had ID on him, and so he declared that he was a member of the European Parliament.
“I didn’t use medication,” he stated.
The official expressed remorse for violating the coronavirus guidelines. “I apologize to my household, to my colleagues, to my voters,” he stated. The Belgian authorities has prohibited all gatherings in Brussels — the seat of the European Parliament — to manage the unfold of virus.
Mr. Orban’s celebration has forged itself more and more as a defender of conservative Christian values and has used anti-gay rhetoric at residence in Hungary. The federal government lately submitted laws proscribing marriage to unions between a person and a lady.
Mr. Szajer is a founding member of the governing celebration and longtime ally of Mr. Orban, the prime minister. He has served as a member of the European Parliament since Hungary entered the European bloc in 2004.
On Sunday, two days after the celebration, Mr. Szajer introduced that he would resign from the European Parliament efficient Dec. 31. He cited the stresses of day by day political battle, although he stated his resignation was not associated to Hungary’s dispute with the 25 different E.U. member states over the following funds and coronavirus stimulus.
Every week earlier than asserting his resignation, Mr. Szajer stated in an interview that the European Union was attempting to punish Hungary for exercising its sovereign rights.
Mr. Szajer’s fellow conservative Hungarian parliamentarians provided reward for him in a press release.
“On behalf of ourselves and our whole political neighborhood,” they stated, “we, the members of the Fidesz-KDNP European Parliament group, thank Jozsef Szajer, who performed a vital function in enabling Hungarian civic conservatism and Christian democracy to occupy their rightful place within the European political enviornment.”
Mr. Szajer is married to Tunde Hando, a justice on Hungary’s Constitutional Court docket.
Different members of Fidesz have needed to resign after intercourse scandals. Within the run-up to Hungary’s 2019 municipal elections, video footage emerged of a Fidesz mayor partaking in an orgy on a yacht on the Adriatic. The mayor received re-election, however resigned a month later.
Monika Pronczuk reported from Brussels and Benjamin Novak from Budapest.
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