There are no legal or financial consequences for Péter Magyar not coming to his workplace despite the electoral authorization, because EU law almost does not sanction it at all if an EP representative regularly stays away or does not participate in plenary or committee meetings.

In practice, there are no legal consequences to the fact that Péter Magyar, as a member of the European Parliament, does not come to his workplace at all, nor does he participate in committee meetings, even though he is also the vice-chairman of the constitutional affairs committee. There is no specific rule as to how many times and for how long EP representatives can be absent, and there are no legal consequences.

- The honorarium of the members of the European Parliament is twice the salary of a member of the Hungarian Parliament, despite this, the EU legislation says very little about the obligation to properly perform the duties and the details thereof - said Zoltán Lomnici, junior to the Magyar Nemzet, emphasizing that while in our country the legislation in force clearly stipulates the presence obligation of the representatives , and strict financial consequences are defined in the event that a representative does not perform his duties properly and stays away from the meetings or committee work without justification, until then the EU legislation is quite incomplete regarding the obligation to properly perform the duties of a representative , details, on the other hand, no financial sanctions are established for unexcused absences at all.

- According to the rules of procedure of the EP, an attendance sheet must be displayed for the representatives to sign at the meetings. According to the testimony of the attendance sheet, the names of the representatives present must be recorded as present in the minutes of the meetings. The names of representatives who are absent certified by the president must be recorded in the minutes of the meetings as certified absent. At the same time, there is no specific rule regarding the number of times a representative can be absent, permanent absence has no legal consequences , said the constitutional lawyer.

According to Zoltán Lomnici Jr., the fact that an EP representative does not come to his workplace and receives the equivalent of several million forints per month from the taxes of European citizens is also morally unacceptable, because it is against the principles of indirect democracy.

– During the debate of the EP list leaders, Péter Magyar criticized Tamás Deutsch for participating in few votes in the EP and promised that representatives of the Tisza Party would enter the EP and represent the voters. Despite this, he was already absent from the meeting of the constitutional affairs committee, where he is the fourth vice-chairman of the committee, for the first important time - reminded the constitutional lawyer, according to whom this can be evaluated as a deception of the voters.

The full article can be read here .

Source: Hungarian Nation

Author: Dorka Gabay

Cover image: MTI/EPA/Patrick Seeger