The European Parliament has voted to once again strip Polish far-right leader Grzegorz Braun of immunity so that he can face further criminal charges in his homeland, including for Holocaust denial.
Braun, who is already separately on trial for attacking a Hanukkah ceremony, will now face prosecution for his claim that the gas chambers at Auschwitz are “fake” as well as for various antisemitic incidents during his presidential election campaign.
Braun – who finished a surprise fourth in the election, taking 6.3% of the vote, and whose party has since surged in the polls – has a long history of spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories.
In July 2025, he said during a radio interview that “Auschwitz with its gas chambers is unfortunately a fake”. A few days later, he reiterated that he finds the “hypothesis of the existence” of the gas chambers to be “a tenuous one, not based on verified facts”, that “has become less and less convincing over the years”.
His remarks were widely condemned in Poland. Braun was also accused of denying Nazi crimes, an offence in Poland that can be punished with a prison sentence of up to three years.
In September 2025, Poland’s justice minister and prosecutor general, Waldemar Żurek, asked the European Parliament to lift Braun’s immunity, so that he could be presented with such a charge. Today, a majority of MEPs voted to approve that request.
Meanwhile, in a separate vote, MEPs also approved another request, submitted by Poland in July 2025 to strip Braun of immunity to face four other charges.
One, which is for criminal defamation, stems from Braun’s claim, during a televised presidential debate in April last year, that the yellow paper daffodils distributed each year in Warsaw to mark the anniversary of the 1943 Jewish Ghetto Uprising against German Nazi rule are “symbols of shame”.
During the same debate, Braun also warned about the “Judaisation” of Poland, saying that “Jews have far too much say in Polish affairs”. That prompted protests by some of his opponents, one of whom filed a notification to prosecutors.
If Braun is convicted, criminal defamation carries a prison sentence of up to one year, theft up to eight years, and destruction of property up to five years.
The European Parliament’s decisions mark the third and fourth time it has approved requests from Poland to lift Braun’s immunity.
The first took place in May 2025, as a result of which he is now on trial for four alleged crimes, including attacking a Jewish Hanukkah ceremony in the Polish parliament in December 2023.
In November 2025, the European Parliament stripped his immunity again, this time to face charges of inciting religious hatred against Jews and assaulting a doctor involved in carrying out a late-term abortion.
