BREAKINGBREAKING,
A state’s withdrawal from the court takes effect one year after the deposit of the withdrawal’s instrument.
Hungary’s government has announced it will withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC), just before Prime Minister Viktor Orban was to receive his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu, the subject of an ICC arrest warrant.
“Hungary exits the International Criminal Court. The government will initiate the withdrawal procedure on Thursday, in accordance with the constitutional and international legal framework,” Orban’s chief of staff Gergely Gulyas posted on Facebook on Thursday.
A state’s withdrawal from the court takes effect one year after the deposit of the withdrawal’s instrument — usually in the form of a formal letter declaring the pullout – with the UN Secretary General’s office.
So far only Burundi and the Philippines have withdrawn from the court.
The ICC has not yet commented on Hungary’s announcement.
Meanwhile, prime minister Netanyahu arrived in Budapest early Thursday morning on his first trip to Europe since 2023 and in defiance of the ICC’s arrest warrant against him.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban extended an invitation to Netanyahu last November, a day after the ICC issued the arrest warrant over alleged war crimes in Gaza.
Orban had vowed the EU member would not execute the warrant, despite being an ICC member, saying the court’s decision “intervenes in an ongoing conflict… for political purposes”.
“Welcome to Budapest, Benjamin Netanyahu!” wrote Hungary’s Defence Minister Kristof Szalay-Bobrovniczky on Facebook as Netanyahu began his visit, and after greeting him at the airport in capital Budapest.
The Hague-based ICC criticised Hungary’s decision to defy its warrant for Netanyahu. The court’s spokesperson, Fadi El Abdallah, said that it is not for parties to the ICC “to unilaterally determine the soundness of the Court’s legal decisions”.
“However, it is not for states to unilaterally determine the soundness of the court’s legal decisions,” he added.
Hungary signed the Rome Statute, the international treaty that created the ICC, in 1999 and ratified it two years later during Orban’s first term in office.
The ICC, set up in 2002, has no police of its own and relies on the cooperation of its 125 member states to carry out any arrest warrants.
However, Budapest has not promulgated the associated convention for constitutional reasons and therefore has asserted it is not obliged to comply with the decisions of the ICC.