Hungary announces withdrawal from ICC as Netanyahu arrives for state visit
Hungarian PM invited Netanyahu day after court issued warrant for his arrest; Budapest says while it ratified statute that formed body, it ‘was never made part of Hungarian law’
BUDAPEST, Hungary — Minutes before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was received by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban Thursday, Budapest announced that it was withdrawing from the International Criminal Court, which in November issued an arrest warrant for the Israeli premier.
“The withdrawal process will begin on Thursday, in line with Hungary’s constitutional and international legal obligations,” Orban’s spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said.
Orban invited his Israeli counterpart to Budapest in November, a day after the ICC issued its arrest warrant over allegations of war crimes in Gaza, where Israel launched its offensive following a brutal massacre by Hamas-led terrorists in southern Israel.
Israel has rejected the accusations, which it says are politically motivated and fuelled by antisemitism. It says the International Criminal Court has lost all legitimacy by issuing warrants against a democratically elected leader of a country exercising the right of self-defense.
As a founding member of the ICC, Hungary is theoretically obliged to arrest and hand over anyone subject to a warrant from the court but Orban made clear that Hungary would not respect the ruling which he called “brazen, cynical and completely unacceptable.”
Hungary signed the ICC’s founding document in 1999 and ratified it in 2001, but the law has not been promulgated.
Gergely Gulyas, Orban’s chief of staff, 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.
On Thursday, Gulyas told state news agency MTI that the government would launch the withdrawal process later in the day.
Orban had raised the prospect of Hungary’s exit from the ICC after US President Donald Trump imposed sanctions on the court’s prosecutor, Karim Khan, in February.
“It’s time for Hungary to review what we’re doing in an international organization that is under US sanctions,” Orban said on X in February.
The bill on starting the year-long process of withdrawing from the ICC is likely to be approved by Hungary’s parliament, which is dominated by Orban’s Fidesz party.
Netanyahu has enjoyed strong support over the years from Hungary’s Orban, an important ally who has been ready to block EU statements or actions critical of Israel in the past.
ICC judges said when they issued the warrant that there were reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and his former defense 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.”
Israel has asserted that it is only targeting Hamas and other terror groups in the Strip, and accuses them of using the civilian population and infrastructure as human shields.
The ICC also issued an arrest warrant against Hamas’s military chief, Mohammed Deif, in November, but canceled it in February after Hamas confirmed he was killed in an Israeli strike in July.
In the wake of the warrants, a number of countries said they would not arrest Netanyahu were he to visit, including Hungary, Argentina, the Czech Republic, and Romania.
Poland said it would seek to shield him from arrest, while France and Italy said they believed he had immunity, as a world leader from a state not party to the ICC.
Landlocked Hungary is surrounded by Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and Austria. According to a December Euronews report, Slovenia and Austria have both indicated they would enforce the arrest warrant.
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