Hungary’s government has announced its withdrawal from the International Criminal Court (ICC), just before Prime Minister Viktor Orban received 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.
Orban, who first floated the idea in February after the US imposed sanctions on the court, said Hungary is withdrawing because the ICC has become too politicised, citing its decisions on Israel.
The withdrawal bill is likely to be approved by Hungary’s parliament, which is dominated by Orban’s Fidesz party.
The governing body of the ICC voiced regret and concern over Hungary’s announcement, saying any departure harmed a “shared quest for justice”.
“When a State Party withdraws from the Rome Statute [that established the ICC], it clouds our shared quest for justice and weakens our resolve to fight impunity,” the presidency of the Assembly of State Parties said in a statement.
The court is “at the centre of the global commitment to accountability” and the international community should “support it without reservation”, the statement added.
“Justice requires our unity.”
A state’s withdrawal from the court also takes effect only one year after the deposit of the withdrawal’s instrument – usually in the form of a formal letter declaring the pullout – with the United Nations secretary-general’s office.
So far, only Burundi and the Philippines have withdrawn from the court.
Netanyahu arrived in Budapest early on Thursday morning on his first trip to Europe since 2023 in defiance of the ICC’s arrest warrant against him for alleged war crimes in Gaza. Speaking at a news conference with his Hungarian counterpart, the Israeli prime minister personally thanked Orban for his decision to leave the court, calling it a “bold and principled position” against the “corrupt organisation”.
Israel has rejected the ICC’s accusations, which it says are politically motivated and fuelled by anti-Semitism. It says the ICC has lost all legitimacy by issuing warrants against a democratically elected leader of a country exercising the right of self-defence.
Orban extended an invitation to Netanyahu last November, a day after the ICC issued the arrest warrant.
He had said the European Union member would not execute the warrant, despite being an ICC member, saying the court’s decision “intervenes in an ongoing conflict … for political purposes”.
The Hague-based court criticised Hungary’s decision to defy its warrant for Netanyahu.
ICC judges said when they issued the warrant, there were reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and his former defence chief were criminally responsible for acts including murder, persecution and starvation as a weapon of war as part of a “widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population of Gaza”.
However, the court’s spokesperson, Fadi El Abdallah, said it is not for parties to the ICC “to unilaterally determine the soundness of the Court’s legal decisions”.
Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock slammed Netanyahu’s visit to Hungary in defiance of the ICC, calling it a “bad day for international criminal law”.
‘Constitutional obligation to execute warrant’
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.
Gulyas, Orban’s aide, said in November that although Hungary ratified the Rome Statute of the ICC, it “was never made part of Hungarian law”, meaning that no measure of the court can be carried out within Hungary.
Tamas Hoffmann, a senior research fellow at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences specialising in international criminal law, argues that Hungary still has “a legal obligation” to comply with the ICC’s decisions.
He pointed to a Council of the European Union statement affirming all states’ responsibility to cooperate with the court, as well as a provision in Hungary’s constitution requiring the country to “ensure the conformity of international law with Hungarian law”.
“Hungary has an international, European and constitutional obligation to execute the arrest warrant issued by the ICC,” wrote Hoffman in an article.