Hun­gary Could Be 1st Euro­pean Coun­try To With­draw From ICC

Accord­ing to Radio Free Europe, Hun­gary plans to with­draw from the Inter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court, poten­tial­ly mak­ing it the first Euro­pean coun­try to exit the orga­ni­za­tion, though it’s yet to be offi­cial­ly con­firmed.

The Hun­gar­i­an gov­ern­ment had been con­sid­er­ing the move for some time. The for­mal pro­ce­dure would involve offer­ing a res­o­lu­tion pro­pos­al to the Hun­gar­i­an Par­lia­ment and ini­ti­at­ing the with­draw­al if the Par­lia­ment approves, which could take as long as one year. “Accord­ing to our source, the text of the draft res­o­lu­tion may soon be post­ed on the web­site of the Nation­al Assem­bly,” Szabad Euró­pa report­ed, adding, “We under­stand that the polit­i­cal deci­sion to with­draw Hun­gary was actu­al­ly made weeks ago, but the gov­ern­ment was still wait­ing to see what U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump would say about the ICC.”

On Feb­ru­ary 6, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump announced he was impos­ing sanc­tions on the ICC, stat­ing that “the Inter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court (ICC), as estab­lished by the Rome Statute, has engaged in ille­git­i­mate and base­less actions tar­get­ing Amer­i­ca and our close ally Israel. The ICC has, with­out a legit­i­mate basis, assert­ed juris­dic­tion over and opened pre­lim­i­nary inves­ti­ga­tions con­cern­ing per­son­nel of the Unit­ed States and cer­tain of its allies, includ­ing Israel, and has fur­ther abused its pow­er by issu­ing base­less arrest war­rants tar­get­ing Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu and For­mer Min­is­ter of Defense Yoav Gal­lant.  The ICC has no juris­dic­tion over the Unit­ed States or Israel, as nei­ther coun­try is par­ty to the Rome Statute or a mem­ber of the ICC.”

“The ICC’s recent actions against Israel and the Unit­ed States set a dan­ger­ous prece­dent, direct­ly endan­ger­ing cur­rent and for­mer Unit­ed States per­son­nel, includ­ing active ser­vice mem­bers of the Armed Forces, by expos­ing them to harass­ment, abuse, and pos­si­ble arrest.  This malign con­duct in turn threat­ens to infringe upon the sov­er­eign­ty of the Unit­ed States and under­mines the crit­i­cal nation­al secu­ri­ty and for­eign pol­i­cy work of the Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment and our allies, includ­ing Israel,” he con­tin­ued.

A source told Szabad Euró­pa that after Trump imposed sanc­tions on the ICC, “the Hun­gar­i­an gov­ern­ment took this as a green light.”

Hun­gar­i­an con­ser­v­a­tive Prime Min­is­ter Vik­tor Orban has been a staunch sup­port­er of Israel; he is meet­ing Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu in Budapest on Wednes­day. In Novem­ber, after the ICC issued the arrest war­rant, Orban ripped it, call­ing it “out­ra­geous­ly brazen and cyn­i­cal,” UPI report­ed.

“Lat­er today, I will invite the Israeli prime min­is­ter, Mr. Netanyahu, to vis­it Hun­gary, where I will guar­an­tee him, if he comes, that the judg­ment of the ICC will have no effect in Hun­gary, and that we will not fol­low its terms,” he stat­ed in Novem­ber. “There is no choice here, we have to defy this deci­sion.”