Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-06-13-Speech-2-055"
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"en.20000613.6.2-055"2
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"Madam President, this is a request from the
of the
of Berlin to lift the immunity of Mr André Brie, a Member of this House. The Legal Affairs Committee recommends to the House that we decide not to waive immunity in this case. It would be helpful if I say a few brief words about the grounds for our recommendations.
The case concerns a demonstration mounted by Mr Brie and supporters in September 1998 when he, with eight others, unrolled and exhibited a placard at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin protesting against the gap in society between the haves and the have-nots. This was repeated on other occasions. The local prosecutor characterised this as a breach of Article 26(2) of the German Assembly Law, because it was held to be an assembly conducted without prior authorisation by, or information to, the appropriate authorities. This gives rise to a question of immunity because, as Members of the House are aware, they enjoy immunity in their own Member States on the same terms as if they were members of their own parliament.
Under Article 46(2) of the Basic Law of the Federal Republic, Members of the Bundestag may not be called to account or arrested for a punishable offence, except by permission of the Bundestag, unless they are apprehended in the course of committing the offence or on the following day. Under these circumstances, it is clear that were Mr Brie a Member of the Bundestag he would enjoy immunity from prosecution which has been launched against him. Therefore, under European law he, as a Member of this House, enjoys immunity but Parliament may choose to waive that immunity.
Our recommendation is that we should not waive immunity. This is a case of the conduct of political activity and the expression of political opinion. The tenor of decisions of Parliament in such cases has always been that immunity is not waived. There has been only one exception to this, where speeches directly and deliberately express holocaust denial or other forms of xenophobic attack on persons. This is by no means such a case and it follows all the precedents in which Parliament has held that political activity should be protected.
This is not a matter of a benefit conferred on individual Members as politicians. It is a matter of sustaining the conditions of a democratic assembly with free, open and frank public debate. I have great pleasure in proposing to the House the report of the Legal Affairs Committee."@en1
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"Generalstaatsanwalt"1
"Landgericht"1
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The resource appears as object in 2 triples