5.  The applicant was born in 1956 and lives in Budapest. At the material time, he was a Member of Parliament and a member of the largest opposition party, the Hungarian Socialist Party.
6.  At the plenary parliamentary session on 18 March 2013 the applicant made an interpellation. After the respondent Government member’s reply, the applicant had the floor to give a counter-reply. According to the applicant and not contested by the Government, during his speech numerous remarks were made. Once the applicant finished talking, he sat down and showed his left middle finger in the direction of the Jobbik MPs.
7.  On 25 March 2013 the Speaker initiated disciplinary proceedings against the applicant. He submitted a proposal to the plenary to fine him – under section 48(3) of Act no. XXXVI of 2012 on Parliament – 131,410 Hungarian forints (approximately 450 euros) for using a blatantly offensive expression.
The Speaker’s proposal reads as follows:
“SPEAKER OF PARLIAMENT
Decision in disciplinary matter
Proposal to impose a fine
According to the minutes of Parliament’s session of 18 March 2013, Tibor Szanyi MP used a blatantly offensive expression during the counter-reply (viszonválasza során, sic) of his interpellation.
For this reason, I propose, under section 48(3) of Act no. XXXVI of 2012 on Parliament and in application of my prerogatives under subparagraph 6 of the same, that Parliament
impose a fine
whose amount should be one-third of the MP’s honorarium, that is, HUF 131,410.
Budapest, 25 March 2013
Signed: László Kövér”
An affirmative decision was adopted by the plenary on 28 March 2013, without any remedy available.
8.  On 30 April 2013 the applicant submitted – under section 90 of Parliamentary Resolution no. 46/1994. (IX.30.) OGY (“the Rules of Parliament”) – an interpellation to the Speaker. It was addressed to the Minister of National Development and concerned the publication of the list of successful bidders in the national tender for tobacco retail licences.
9.  It reads as follows[1]:
“The nation has acquired 1,500 tobacco retailers. They have most of the dough[2]; more precisely FIDESZ’s[3] pals and cronies have it. The mafia-government cannot be bothered that several thousands of petrol station keepers, grocers, newsagents or real tobacco retailers have lost their living.
Tobacco retailers have not had a significant margin, exactly 4.5 per cent. This was generally just enough to cover perhaps the overheads, although the costs of lease of the shop and the employees’ wages had to be generated beyond this profit. It has been the State in any case that got the real profit through the excise tax and the VAT.
What is happening now? Every twenty tobacco retailers will go bankrupt and be replaced by one, that is, instead of every twenty retailers, one will have the concentrated profit.
However, the newly introduced 10 per cent profit, now due to the cronies (csókosoknak járó), will result in a situation in which the [new] “national” retailers will have forty times higher profit than was usual. Forty-fold profit for the pals and the cronies! This is big-time bloody swinishness (vérbő disznóság)!
Tobacco licences are, in Europe, normally the privilege of those with impaired working abilities. Why? Because this work requires the least mobility, it is locally done and not too complicated. The government have finished off this tradition by forcing into unemployment tens of thousands of employees of small Hungarian enterprises; instead, they give all the opportunities to their obese pals, who can now freely select their underpaid dummy employees among the freshly expropriated losers.
The government’s trust of lies is disseminating their false sermon. But there is no point in lying; the tens of thousands who have been sacked and their families will not be deceived. But I am going even further. There is not one living soul in this country who would believe your deceitful talk.
Not even yourselves, since you are perfectly aware that you are legislating in order to rob. You have sacrificed tens of thousands of real Hungarian employments in order to be able to freely abuse the State monopoly.
I am asking therefore the Honourable Minister: is your face not burning with shame?
And if it is, are you then planning to surrender the power and duly hide your head? Or else are you planning to continue looting the country, now completely without a face, that is, barefacedly (pofátlanul)?”
10.  The interpellation was refused by the Speaker on 6 May 2013 – under section 97(4) of the Rules of Parliament – with the reasoning that it contained statements that were injurious to the prestige of Parliament and inadmissible in a democratically functioning system.
No remedy lay against the decision.
11.  The applicant submitted a further interpellation on the same topic on 21 May 2013. This interpellation reads as follows[4]:
“The recent weeks were mostly about you distributing tobacco licences. To benefit from that, one basically needed to be right-wing, extreme right-wing. But to get the golden prize of the juicy retail spots possibly generating millions per day, one needed to belong to, one way or another, the jamboree of buddies of the local FIDESZ-chieftains.
To win, you did not even need to have business premises. Originally, it was sufficient to undertake to sell tobacco and to adore FIDESZ. In exchange and ex post facto, you have increased the statutory profit rate and, at the same time, prohibited tobacco selling anywhere else, destroying tens of thousands of shops and their employees, under the slogan “let the strong live and the weak perish”.
You, a mercenary of FIDESZ, are apparently eager to keep serving the other projects of FIDESZ as well, that is, what you can buy in these [new] shops will include, in addition to tobacco, alcohol, gambling tickets, newspapers and even things to lick. The category of “things to lick” seems still to be open, but one can fear that whatever you can buy in these “Spahi-shops”, such as tax-free spirits, will be prohibited elsewhere. Amongst these, I am sure, you will consider sex toys, common horse-riding equipment, and, to please your [extreme right-wing] friends, maybe penis pumps as well or those dance bars around which naked strippers jerk.
I am asking you: have you calculated the damage you are causing to provincial Hungary through this operation? Will the licences issued be sufficient for the mayors and MPs of FIDESZ, reduced to a dummy existence after the falling down? Do you believe that the democratic forces winning the 2014 elections will allow your failed teams to continue operating on these looting fields?
My previous, prohibited question also targeted this issue: is your face not burning with shame? Since then, the answer has become clear: no, it is not, because you have already been, without a face, or to use your favourite expression, barefacedly playing games with the livelihood of the Hungarian people. You have pushed anyone into misery; you have taken away even the allowances of the most miserable, those disabled – just to be able to stuff your mafia feeding on public procurement.
I am asking therefore another question: are you willing to rush voluntarily onto History’s garbage dump, or do you want first to try your luck with the bold game called “power or prison”?
I am awaiting your reply!”
The interpellation was refused by the Speaker on 27 May 2013, with reasoning similar to the one above (see paragraph 10 above). No remedy lay against the decision.