Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-06-30-Speech-1-042"
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"en.20030630.7.1-042"2
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". – Mr President, this is one of those cases concerning the immunity of a Member of Parliament which raises in a very sharp form the issue of the immunity or non-immunity of Members when they are indulging in political activity outside Parliament. It is very clear law that expressions of opinions or votes cast in this House can never be the subject of legal action or prosecution anywhere. That is an essential part of the liberty of discussion in a democratic assembly.
However, in the course of their duties, Members of this House often indulge in political speech and political activity elsewhere, most particularly in their own constituencies and in their home state – for example at party congresses. The case we have before us concerning Mr Camre arises from a speech at his party congress in Denmark in 2001, shortly after the desperate events of 11 September.
In the course of a speech to his party congress, Mr Camre made some very strong and, in my personal judgment, highly offensive remarks about Muslims living in the West. All the countries of the West, he said, are infiltrated by Muslims and some of them speak nicely to us while they are waiting to become sufficiently numerous to get rid of us, as they have done in Sudan, Indonesia, Nigeria and the Balkans. There are other similar or even more unpleasant remarks.
Under Danish criminal law, section 226 b of the Danish Criminal Code, it is an offence to make statements constituting derisory and humiliating treatment of a group of people. In this case the accusation is that the statements made were derisory and humiliating treatment of people in Denmark, namely people of Muslim belief or family background.
Under European law, the position is that a Member of this House, acting in his home state, enjoys the same immunity from prosecution and legal intervention as would a Member of the home parliament. Under the Danish constitution, a Member accused of a criminal offence such as this enjoys immunity from prosecution unless the Folketing – the parliament – waives that immunity.
We are informed that normally the Folketing would waive immunity in a case of this kind. However, the European Parliament has always rightly said that we must have a common set of principles concerning the waiver of immunity that apply to all MEPs in all countries. Therefore, the issue is not would the Danish Parliament waive immunity? but ought this Parliament to waive immunity in a case of this kind? where the words complained of are certainly to any ordinary judgment very offensive – to put it mildly – but where they are also unquestionably statements made in the course of a political activity.
The Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market instructed me – rightly – to look into the whole range of the precedents, the decisions that this House has taken about immunity in these sorts of situations. It became clear to the officials who looked into it, and myself, that Parliament has a universal practice of declining to waive immunity in the context of prosecutions where what is involved is a prosecution of matters which are directly the content of a Member's political activity.
That being so, while I have to say that I myself have extreme disgust for the remarks that were made, I consider it to be my duty as rapporteur, and in any event it is the unanimous opinion of the Legal Affairs Committee, that in this case the Parliament ought to inform the Danish authorities that it declines to waive the immunity of Mr Camre and I so recommend.
I must say, as I reviewed the case law, it did seem to me personally – and this is a purely personal opinion – that it might be that over the years we have cast the net of parliamentary immunity rather wide. It would not be appropriate or just to use an individual case arbitrarily to change the practice, but it might be worth the Committee on Constitutional Affairs reviewing the question of how far we ought to expect parliamentary immunity to extend, how far we should wish it to. I believe it would be appropriate for the Constitutional Affairs Committee to consider this if in due course it were invited to do so. But that is a separate issue. There is no doubt that the required course of justice in upholding the long-standing principles and case law of this Parliament is to decline to waive immunity in this case."@en1
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