Ultra-nationalist Polish MEP heard by EP legal committee
Grzegorz Braun, an ultra-nationalist Polish MEP, faced the European Parliament's Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI) in Strasbourg on Monday amid ongoing proceedings aimed to strip him of immunity as he faces six indictments in Poland.
In June, Poland's former Justice Minister and Prosecutor General, Adam Bodnar, sent a motion asking the European Parliament (EP) to lift Braun's immunity as he had insulted and held captive a doctor, Gizela Jagielska, in April.
The European Parliament had agreed to waive Braun's immunity in May after he had been charged with extinguishing Hanukkah candles in the Polish parliament and with a number of other incidents.
Last week, EP President Roberta Metsola said that Poland had asked her to strip Braun and another Polish MEP, Tomasz Buczek, of immunity in connection with the ongoing legal proceedings in Poland.
The EC committee examined on Monday the motion in which Braun had been accused of publicly inciting online "hatred based on religious differences" and the offence of religious feelings "by giving an interview on YouTube concerning the use of a fire extinguisher in the Polish parliament on December 12, 2023, to put out the candles on the traditional Jewish candelabrum, the menorah."
The last charge concerns the destruction of ten posters in March in Opole, western Poland, "by writing in black paint: STOP PERVERSION PROPAGANDA."
Braun was once excluded from the EP debates and deprived of his allowance for 30 days for disrupting a Holocaust commemoration. Earlier, he had been excluded from the EP debates for two days and deprived of his allowance for the same period for his remarks on LGBTQ people during a plenary session.
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