Request for the waiver of the immunity of Salvatore De Meo
The decision sets out the European Parliament’s position on a request from the Belgian authorities to waive the parliamentary immunity of Member Salvatore De Meo in connection with envisaged criminal proceedings, and concludes that his immunity should not be waived.
BACKGROUND
On 16 April 2025, the Belgian Federal Prosecutor’s Office requested the waiver of Salvatore De Meo’s immunity in relation to criminal proceedings to be instituted against him; this request was transmitted to Parliament by the Belgian Federal Public Service for Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation on 6 May 2025 and announced in plenary on 21 May 2025. The request is linked to a broader investigation into alleged corruption involving the company Huawei and Members of the European Parliament, including invitations to Huawei‑supported events, excessive gifts and other benefits allegedly provided in exchange for favourable political positions. Additional information was provided by the Federal Prosecutor and the Investigating Judge during an exchange of views on 15 July 2025 and in a written reply of 18 September 2025, and Salvatore De Meo was heard by the Committee on Legal Affairs on 3 December 2025. The legal assessment is based on Articles 8 and 9 of Protocol No 7 on the Privileges and Immunities of the European Union, Article 6(2) of the 1976 Act on the election of Members of the European Parliament by direct universal suffrage, relevant case‑law of the Court of Justice and the General Court, and Rules 5(2), 6(1) and 9 of Parliament’s Rules of Procedure.
CONTENT
The Belgian authorities allege that Salvatore De Meo attended a dinner in Brussels on 25 June 2024 organised and paid for by a representative of Huawei, during which projects related to “One Health Vision” and Huawei were discussed, and that he did not declare acceptance of the payment for this dinner to the European Parliament; he allegedly also received a gift at that occasion. According to the additional information, Huawei is alleged to have invested funds in his constituency in exchange for his public support for its technological solutions, and he appears in a promotional video for Huawei praising those solutions in the context of the European “SMART VILLAGES” project. The Belgian Federal Prosecutor later indicated that these alleged actions could amount to passive public bribery under Article 246(1) of the Belgian Criminal Code.
Parliament recalls that immunity is not a personal privilege but a guarantee of its independence, and that it protects Members from legal proceedings in relation to activities carried out in the performance of parliamentary duties and inseparable from those duties. It notes that the alleged offence does not concern opinions expressed or votes cast in the performance of parliamentary duties within the meaning of Article 8 of Protocol No 7. Parliament finds that the request for waiver of immunity suffers from a “flagrant scarcity of concrete elements” and that the subsequent oral and written exchanges with the Federal Prosecutor did not dispel the considerable uncertainty surrounding the case. On this basis, Parliament concludes that the information provided does not allow it to take a sufficiently informed decision to waive the immunity of Salvatore De Meo and that the level of uncertainty could indicate the existence of fumus persecutionis.
Parliament therefore decides not to waive the immunity of Salvatore De Meo and instructs its President to forward the decision and the report of the Committee on Legal Affairs immediately to the competent authority of the Kingdom of Belgium and to Salvatore De Meo.
This summary was AI-generated and human-reviewed.