As the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, finished a speech to the European parliament, the Italian MEP Ilaria Salis rose from her seat and with about a dozen other leftwing colleagues belted out the anti-fascist anthem Bella Ciao.
Until May, Salis had been held in pre-trial detention in a Hungarian prison following her arrest on charges of assault in February last year at a counter-protest to a neo-Nazi rally in Budapest. She was then freed and allowed to return to Italy in June, after her election that month to the European parliament.
