[ad_1]
A senior politician from Hungary’s ruling party, who resigned as an MEP on Sunday, said he had been present at a party at the house dissolved by Brussels police for violating lockdown rules.
Jozsef Szajer, a leader in Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s ruling conservative Fidesz party, apologized for any wrongdoing in a statement released today.
“I regret having broken the rules of the confinement, that was irresponsible on my part, and I will accept the sanctions that result,” he said.
The statement was cited identically by at least four major Hungarian news websites. Reuters was unable to download the original text.
Police intervened because Friday’s party violated lockdown rules, which in Belgium prohibit any gathering of more than four people in an enclosed space, Belgian prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said police detained about 20 people in an apartment, in a building with a bar, in central Brussels.
“A report was made for SJ for violation of narcotics law,” Sarah Durant, spokeswoman for Brussels prosecutors, said in a statement.
She said that criminal proceedings can only be started after a waiver of diplomatic or parliamentary immunity from those involved.
Hungarian news site Telex.hu quoted prosecutors as saying that SJ was Szajer. Reuters was unable to reach Szajer for comment.
In his statement, Szajer denied taking drugs and said he had offered the police to conduct a drug test at the scene.
“The police said they had found ecstasy pills. They were not mine, I don’t know who put them there and how. I told the police,” he said in his statement.
Szajer, a prominent member of Hungary’s political elite for decades and the author of the main draft of Hungary’s new constitution in 2011, resigned on Sunday, effective at the end of the year, citing unspecified moral reasons.
[ad_2]