Hungary’s government has announced it is withdrawing from the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The move was announced by a senior official in Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government hours after Israel’s leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who is sought under an ICC arrest warrant, arrived in Hungary for a state visit.
Orban had invited Netanyahu as soon as the warrant was issued last November, saying the ruling would have “no effect” in his country.
In November, ICC judges said there were “reasonable grounds” that Netanyahu bore “criminal responsibility” for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the war between Israel and Hamas. Netanyahu has condemned the ICC’s decision as “antisemitic”.
The ICC, a global court, has the authority to prosecute those accused of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Hungary is a founding member of the ICC, which counts 125 member states, and will be the first European Union nation to pull out of it.
The ICC was a “respectable initiative”, Orban’s chief of staff Gergely Gulyas told Hungarian state-owned news agency MTI, but added it had deviated from its original purpose and become a political body.
He said the warrant issued against Netanyahu was unacceptable and that the government did not want to participate in the court’s work anymore. Hungary’s parliament has never proclaimed the ICC’s statute, so it is not part of the country’s law, Gulyas added.
Israel meanwhile has thanked Orban for its “clear and strong moral stance alongside Israel,” Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar wrote on X.
“The so-called ‘International Criminal Court’ lost its moral authority after trampling the fundamental principles of international law in its zest for harming Israel’s right to self-defence,” Sa’ar added.
The US, Russia, China and North Korea are among the nations that are not part of the ICC, and therefore do not recognise its jurisdiction.
Israel is also not part of the treaty, but the ICC ruled in 2021 that it did have jurisdiction over the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, because the UN’s Secretary General had accepted that Palestinians were a member.
Hungary now needs to send written notification to the UN Secretary General to leave the treaty, with the withdrawal taking effect one year later, according to article 127 of the Rome Statute.
Since the warrant was issued, Hungarian authorities should technically arrest Netanyahu and hand him over to the court in the Hague, although member states do not always choose to enforce ICC warrants.
In Europe, some ICC member states said they would arrest the Israeli leader if he set foot in their country, while others, such as Germany, announced that he would not be detained if he visited.
The White House had said the US rejected the ICC decision and Netanyahu has visited the country since the warrant was issued in November. His visit to Hungary marks Netanyahu’s first trip to Europe since then.
Hungarian Defence Minister Kristof Szalay-Bobrovniczky, greeted Netanyahu on the tarmac of Budapest airport on Wednesday night, welcoming him to the country.
Israel is appealing against the arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant, and strongly rejects the accusations. It both denies the authority of the ICC and the legitimacy of the warrants.
Netanyahu said at the time that it was a “dark day in the history of humanity”, and that the ICC had become “the enemy of humanity”.
“It’s an antisemitic step that has one goal – to deter me, to deter us from having our natural right to defend ourselves against enemies who try to destroy us,” he said.
In the same ruling, ICC judges also issued a warrant against Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif, whom Israel says is dead.
The visit comes as Israel announced it was expanding its Gaza offensive and establishing a new military corridor to put pressure on Hamas, as deadly Israeli strikes were reported across the Palestinian territory.
The war in Gaza was triggered by the deadly Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, which killed some 1,200 people and led to 251 hostages being taken to Gaza. Since then, more than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed, Palestinian health authorities say.
