Text tabled : A7-0267/2011

  Andreas Mölzer (NI), in writing. – (DE) I am delighted that today, the European Parliament has resolved by such a great majority to waive the immunity of Hans-Peter Martin, an Austrian Member of the European Parliament. The institution of various proceedings against Mr Martin confirms the suspicions that have been floating around for a long time, yet which seem to have been deliberately covered up. For years now, we non-attached Members have been tabling parliamentary questions in an attempt to get to the bottom of the suspicions that Mr Martin has been negligent in his management of taxpayers’ money. However, we have had to wait for the ‘sorcerer’s apprentice’ – Martin Ehrenhauser, Mr Martin’s former assistant and now a Member of Parliament himself – to betray his former boss and bring these intrigues into the open. The extent to which he himself is tangled up in the matters requiring investigation also has yet to be established.

It is a matter of great concern, however, that the members of the Austrian political and media landscape have apparently been deliberately deceiving 18% of the Austrian electorate for years now by failing to discuss these dubious goings-on, with the sole intention of damaging the Freedom Party of Austria. I hope that handing over Mr Martin to face Austrian justice will now shed light on the tangle of funding surrounding this self-proclaimed Mr Clean, which is why I voted in favour of the report.