After an initial 15-day suspension in 2021, the former Luxembourg MEP Monica Semedo was suspended again for ten days in April 2023, for harassment.

In a judgment handed down this Wednesday morning, the General Court of the Court of Justice of the European Union found that “Ms Semedo was sent a non-confidential version of the committee’s report, containing a summary of the statements of the witnesses which did not reflect the substance of the testimony given during the investigation. In the second place, the General Court points out that Ms Semedo did not have the opportunity to ascertain the detailed content of the documents in the file serving as the basis for the allegations against her in the decisions concerning her. Although the General Court makes clear that Ms Semedo was indeed in possession of the written exchanges relied on to determine that harassment had occurred, having written those exchanges herself, it nevertheless finds that not all of the written evidence was furnished to her by the committee or the president of the parliament.”

Therefore, this failure to communicate affected the legality of the decisions taken by the president of the European Parliament (from 2023). The court therefore annulled those decisions.

As early as April 2023, the former DP MEP had announced that she  over a decision to ban her from the assembly for ten days following an investigation into claims of bullying. Semedo was also contesting the merits of the case.

This article was originally published in .