STRASBOURG, France — The European Parliament voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to strip two of its members of immunity from prosecution, clearing the way for Belgian authorities to question them in an investigation into payments allegedly made by a consultancy in the Gulf to influence a resolution on migrant labor rights.
The lawmakers, Andrea Pellegrini of Italy and Tomasz Kowal of Poland, both members of the committee on employment and social affairs, deny wrongdoing. The vote, 502 to 61 with 40 abstentions, followed a recommendation from the parliament’s legal affairs committee, whose chairwoman, Ingrid Haugen, said the request from Belgian federal prosecutors “met every test the rules set and some that they do not.”
According to a summary of the prosecutors’ request read to the chamber, investigators believe that a consultancy registered in Dubai paid a combined 340,000 euros into accounts controlled by relatives of the two members between 2024 and 2025. During that period, both lawmakers tabled amendments that softened language in a draft resolution criticizing working conditions on construction sites in the Gulf, and Mr. Pellegrini traveled twice to the region on trips that were not recorded in the parliament’s register.
Mr. Pellegrini, 56, who has sat in the parliament since 2019, said in a statement that the payments were consulting fees earned by his brother-in-law “for work that has nothing to do with me or this institution” and that he welcomed the chance to clear his name. Mr. Kowal, 44, said he had voted for the immunity waiver himself. “I have nothing to hide and I would like the Belgian police to discover that as quickly as possible,” he told reporters.
The case has inevitably drawn comparisons to the 2022 scandal in which Belgian police found hundreds of thousands of euros in cash in the homes of a vice president of the parliament and several associates, and which prompted the institution to tighten its rules on lobbying, declarations of outside income, and travel. Thursday’s request suggests those rules have been easier to write than to enforce. The trips Mr. Pellegrini took, for instance, should have been declared under the 2023 reforms; the parliament’s administration said it had no record of them.
“The reforms created a lot of forms,” Ms. Haugen said. “Forms are filled in by the people they are meant to constrain. We have not solved that, and I am not sure any parliament has.”
The two lawmakers keep their seats and their votes. Belgian prosecutors said they expected to interview both men in Brussels next week.
A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 12, 2026, Section A, Page 3 of the European edition with the headline: European Parliament Lifts Immunity of Two Lawmakers in Bribery Inquiry.
