Egypt Daily News – Hungary announced on Thursday that it had decided to withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC), a move that came shortly after the arrival of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for an official visit to the country.
There is an arrest warrant issued against Netanyahu by the ICC.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who belongs to the right-wing, extended an invitation to his Israeli counterpart to visit Budapest last November, one day after the court issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu on charges of committing war crimes in Gaza, where Israel was carrying out a military operation in response to an attack by Hamas on southern Israel.
Israel rejected the charges, calling them politically motivated and driven by anti-Semitism. It also stated that the ICC had lost all legitimacy by issuing an arrest warrant against a democratically elected leader of a state exercising its right to self-defense.
Hungary is a founding member of the ICC and is theoretically obligated to arrest and surrender anyone subject to an arrest warrant issued by the court. However, Orbán made it clear when he extended the invitation that Budapest would not execute the decision, describing it as “blatant, absurd, and completely unacceptable.”
Hungary signed the agreement establishing the ICC in 1999 and ratified it in 2001, but the law was never officially declared.
Gergely Gulyás, Orbán’s chief of staff, stated in November that although Hungary had ratified the Rome Statute of the ICC, it “was never incorporated into Hungarian law,” meaning that no action from the court could be carried out within Hungary.
On Thursday, the Hungarian news agency (MTI) quoted Gulyás as saying that the Hungarian government would begin the withdrawal process later that day.
Orbán hinted at the possibility of Hungary’s withdrawal after U.S. President Donald Trump imposed sanctions on ICC prosecutor Karim Khan last February.
Orbán said on X (formerly Twitter) in February, “It is time for Hungary to reconsider its actions in an international organization that is subject to U.S. sanctions.”
It is likely that the Hungarian Parliament, dominated by the ruling Fidesz party led by Orbán, will pass a bill to begin the withdrawal process from the court. The withdrawal process will take one year.
Netanyahu has enjoyed strong support from Orbán for years, and the Hungarian leader has been an important ally, ready to block EU statements and actions critical of Israel in the past.
The ICC judges, when issuing the arrest warrants, stated that there were reasonable legal grounds to believe that Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister were criminally responsible for crimes including murder, persecution, and using starvation as a weapon in the war, as part of a “widespread and systematic attack on the civilian population in Gaza.”
The court also issued an arrest warrant for Hamas leader Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri, known as Mohammed Deif, who was announced dead by the movement in January.
