DOI: 10.47743/jss-2025-71-1-14

Abstract: It is of the essence of a functioning democratic regime that those citizens who become public office holders, acquired by the will of the nation through direct, secret, free and periodic voting, should benefit from a series of guarantees to protect them from politically motivated harassment or abuse. The indemnity, initially strictly related to the parliamentary or presidential immunity, has gradually become a concept in its own right, being expressly stated or referred to in a strictly descriptive way in the constitutions of most European countries. In this paper, we aim to explore the range of historical meanings of this concept and to analyse the differences in the nuances of the regulation of the indemnity in national law, 17 while also referring to the legislation of other countries which detail, in particular, the forms of the indemnity and the conditions for its application.

Keywords: Freedom of speech; indemnity; immunity; representative mandate; exercise of mandate; legal liability.

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