Hungarian PM Viktor Orban had raised the prospect of exit from the ICC after US President Donald Trump imposed sanctions on the court docket.
Hungary’s authorities has introduced its withdrawal from the Worldwide Prison Court docket (ICC), simply earlier than Prime Minister Viktor Orban obtained his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, the topic of an ICC arrest warrant.
“Hungary exits the Worldwide Prison Court docket. The federal government will provoke the withdrawal process on Thursday, in accordance with the constitutional and worldwide authorized framework,” Orban’s chief of workers, Gergely Gulyas, posted on Fb on Thursday.
Orban had raised the prospect of the nation’s exit from the ICC after United States President Donald Trump imposed sanctions on the court docket’s prosecutor, Karim Khan, in February. “It’s time for Hungary to assessment what we’re doing in a world organisation that’s below US sanctions,” Orban stated on X in February.
The withdrawal invoice is more likely to be accepted by Hungary’s parliament, which is dominated by Orban’s Fidesz get together. The ICC has not but commented on Hungary’s announcement.
A state’s withdrawal from the court docket additionally takes impact just one 12 months after the deposit of the withdrawal’s instrument – often within the type of a proper letter declaring the pullout – with the United Nations secretary-general’s workplace.
Up to now, solely Burundi and the Philippines have withdrawn from the court docket.
Hungarian Prime Minister Orban, left, with Netanyahu throughout a welcoming ceremony on the Lion’s Courtyard in Budapest, April 3, 2025 (Bernadett Szabo/Reuters)
Netanyahu arrived in Budapest early on Thursday morning on his first journey to Europe since 2023 in defiance of the ICC’s arrest warrant in opposition to him over alleged warfare crimes in Gaza.
Israel has rejected the court docket’s accusations, which it says are politically motivated and fuelled by anti-Semitism. It says the ICC has misplaced all legitimacy by issuing warrants in opposition to a democratically elected chief of a rustic exercising the best of self-defence.
Orban prolonged an invite to Netanyahu final November, a day after the ICC issued the arrest warrant.
He had stated the European Union member wouldn’t execute the warrant, regardless of being an ICC member, saying the court docket’s determination “intervenes in an ongoing battle … for political functions”.
The Hague-based court docket criticised Hungary’s determination to defy its warrant for Netanyahu.
ICC judges stated after they issued the warrant, there have been affordable grounds to consider Netanyahu and his former defence chief have been criminally chargeable for acts together with homicide, persecution and hunger as a weapon of warfare as a part of a “widespread and systematic assault in opposition to the civilian inhabitants of Gaza”.
Nonetheless, the court docket’s spokesperson, Fadi El Abdallah, stated it isn’t for events to the ICC “to unilaterally decide the soundness of the Court docket’s authorized selections”.
Hungary signed the Rome Statute, the worldwide treaty that created the ICC, in 1999 and ratified it two years later throughout Orban’s first time period in workplace.
Gulyas, Orban’s aide, stated in November that though Hungary ratified the Rome Statute of the ICC, it “was by no means made a part of Hungarian regulation”, which means that no measure of the court docket could be carried out inside Hungary.
