Hungarian parliament strips Prime Minister Péter Magyar of immunity in theft case stemming from 2024 nightclub altercation

Hungary’s parliament stripped Prime Minister Péter Magyar of his parliamentary immunity at prosecutors’ request. The motion passed 139-0, with no abstentions.Authorities can now open an investigation into Magyar on suspicion of theft.The case stems from an altercation in the summer of 2024, shortly after the European Parliament elections. At a Budapest nightclub, Magyar, then a member of the European Parliament, argued with a patron who was filming him. He snatched the man’s phone and threw it into the Danube. Divers later recovered it.Hungarian prosecutors asked the European Parliament to lift Magyar’s immunity in September 2024, but it refused. The case was reopened in May 2026, after Magyar became a member of Hungary’s parliament and the country’s prime minister. Prosecutors then turned to the Hungarian parliament.Magyar himself asked lawmakers from his Tisza party to support lifting his immunity. He called the man from the nightclub “a provocateur hired by those in power.” Magyar said he had stopped the man from harassing clubgoers and would do the same today. He called the case politically motivated and blamed prosecutors for keeping his predecessor Viktor Orbán’s “mafia state” in place for years.At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at [email protected].To read Meduza’s exclusive content in English, please subscribe to our newsletter.