Toom made her remarks after reports that Belgian authorities are preparing to formally seek an immunity waiver in respect of her party-mate, Jaak Madison.

Madison should expect no exception to the standard procedures, Toom went on, noting that even Madison himself accepts the due process.

The European Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee is awaiting an official request, reported Tuesday, from the Belgian police to revoke Madison's immunity.

According to the official parliament site, Toom is a substitute member of the legal committee.

"Usually, immunity gets revoked. It is only in very exceptional cases that it is not. And usually, people themselves support having their immunity revoked as it makes it easier to clarify legal matters," Toom explained.

However, given the supposedly slow pace of Belgian bureaucracy in comparison with Estonia's, the request could take up to six months to arrive.

Once the request is received, Toom said, the committee will make a decision, which could take another few months in turn.

Ahead of that and of any decision being made, Madison will have the opportunity to give an account of his own defense before the same committee.

While the final vote on revoking immunity is taken by the full parliament in plenary, this usually follows the decision of the Legal Affairs Committee, Toom added.

She said: "Everything is confidential, while we cannot go around sharing what we have read or what we know. So, the parliament or the plenary usually follows our opinion, because they do not have the information that the members of the Legal Affairs Committee do."

Stripping an MEP of immunity does not automatically mean they lose their seat in the European Parliament, Toom added.

"It means that investigators can handle the case just as with any ordinary person. For example, I have parliamentary immunity—no one can check my phone, no one can search my office, and no information about me can be accessed. Immunity protects me. For this reason, it would need to be revoked, so that if there are serious accusations, it is possible to determine who is telling the truth," she explained.

Toom said she believes in the presumption of innocence and has only read about allegations against Madison via the media.

Madison himself said Tuesday that the case relates to claims made about him ahead of the June 2024 European election, claims he called slander and an effort to harm his electoral chances on the part of his political opponents.

Madison ran for the Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE), the party he had been a member of through his first term as an MEP starting 2019, but left EKRE not long after the election at a time when several high-profile figures were quitting or being expelled from that party. He later joined the Center Party.

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