An Italian MEP who spent more than a year in detention in Hungary before her election said she fears Budapest wants “political revenge,” days before a crucial vote on her future in the European Parliament.
On Tuesday, the Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI) will decide whether to lift Ilaria Salis’ political immunity. If that happens, a criminal case against her in Hungary could be reopened. Speaking to POLITICO on Thursday, Salis said: “This vote is about the defense of fundamental rights, not just about me.”
Salis, 40, was arrested in February 2023 at a far-right rally in Budapest. She was charged with the attempted assault of a far-right activist and accused of being part of an extreme left-wing organization. She was accused of brandishing a hammer in the attack, a claim she has always denied.
Images of Salis in shackles in court drew international outrage and prosecutors called for her to be given an 11-year prison sentence.
She denied the charges, saying they were politically motivated, and was released after winning a seat in the Parliament for Italy’s Greens and Left Alliance, which meant she was granted immunity.
But that could change if the committee votes to lift her immunity following a request from Hungarian authorities. The vote was supposed to take place on June 24 but was delayed. According to The Left group, to which Salis belongs, European People’s Party committee member Javier Zarzalejos had failed to put forward the necessary report in time. “This shows there’s no consensus in JURI to send a sitting MEP to face a highly politicized trial in Hungary,” the group had said in a note on June 17.
If JURI backs stripping her immunity, another vote will take place among all MEPs, likely in Strasbourg in October. If that happens, Salis would remain an MEP but could face charges if Hungary issues a European arrest warrant. According to her lawyers, Salis could be arrested and deported to Hungary on the same day as the vote in Strasbourg.
The vote on Salis will take place at the same time as a vote on lifting the immunity of MEP Péter Magyar, a former Hungarian government insider-turned-opposition leader and vocal critic of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
A test for the European Parliament
For EU lawmakers, Tuesday’s vote is as much about principle as procedure. Parliamentary immunity shields MEPs from politically motivated prosecution, but waiving it is not uncommon.
Salis’ case, however, remains unusual because it involves a Hungarian government that has repeatedly been accused by the European Parliament of dismantling the rule of law.
“Parliamentary immunity is governed by treaties drafted years ago by member states that, at the time, shared democratic pillars and the rule of law,” Salis said. “Today, under Orbán, all of this has collapsed. It no longer holds any value under an illiberal regime.”
Although the hard-right European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and the center-right EPP could support lifting her immunity, Salis said she remains hopeful that some center-right MEPs will back her.
“Even among the right and center right, there are those who operate within shared democratic principles and who understand that granting such a request from Orbán’s Hungary would be absolutely unacceptable,” she said.
Salis frames the case as part of a broader effort to intimidate opposition voices ahead of Hungary’s 2026 election. “There are right-wing forces working to dismantle the European project and the EU itself,” she said. “This request is just one piece of a broader attack.”
From shackles to Strasbourg
The detention of Salis made headlines across Europe. Her father, Roberto Salis, wrote to Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to denounce her conditions as “inhumane,” while critics accused Orbán’s government of weaponizing the judiciary to intimidate anti-fascists.
In May 2023, a few weeks after announcing her candidacy for the 2024 European election, Salis was moved from a jail cell (which she told her lawyer was crawling with rats and bugs) to house arrest in Budapest. The following month, she was elected to the European Parliament, which meant she was released and allowed to return to Italy.
But the reprieve proved temporary. Days after Orbán visited the European Parliament in October 2024, Hungarian prosecutors requested lifting her immunity, a move Salis described as having “rather peculiar timing.”
“The request reached the Parliament exactly the day after Orbán’s visit, when I, along with other colleagues, had spoken out against the Hungarian government,” she said.
“It’s clear that the justice system is being used for political purposes, both as propaganda, especially with Hungary’s elections approaching, and as a form of political revenge,” she said. “It’s impossible to hold a fair trial in Hungary for a political opponent; it would be like extraditing someone to a country such as Iran.”
Salis said she has received a large number of anonymous threats, including some sent to her parents’ home in Italy, as well as public threats from political figures in both Hungary and Italy.
In response to one of her social media posts on Thursday, Orbán’s spokesperson Zoltán Kovács shared the coordinates of Marianosztra prison in northern Hungary.
Salis said this was not the first time Kovács had publicly tried to intimidate her, noting that members of Italy’s far-right League, which is allied with Orbán’s Fidesz party in the European Parliament, have employed similar tactics. “There is a real hate campaign against me, they are actively fueling a climate of hatred,” she said.
“This is not a trial aimed at delivering justice, but an act of retaliation, a way to create a scapegoat and an enemy, so that Orbán’s government can use it for domestic propaganda. These are sham proceedings. A show trial that, in many ways, has already been staged.”
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