The Hungarian government announced on Thursday its decision to withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC), according to the Minister of the Interior, Gergely Gulyás, through a message posted on Facebook.
The Hungarian Executive will initiate the procedure “in accordance with the constitutional and international legal framework,” said the minister, in a decision that marks an important change in the foreign policy of the Central European country.
The ICC was “a respectable initiative but what we have seen in recent times – and the accusation against Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is the saddest example of it – is that it has become a political organism,” Gulyás told the MTI news agency.
The measure occurs after the arrival this Thursday in Budapest of Netanyahu, on its first visit to a state part of the Rome Statute since the ICC issued in November 2024 an arrest warrant against him for alleged war crimes and against humanity in the Gaza Strip.
Budapest had reiterated his intention not to execute the order of the ICC
Viktor Orbán’s ultra -nationalist government invited Netanyahu to visit Budapest and has repeated that he was not going to execute the arrest warrant claiming that the decisions of the ICC “are not recognized” in the Hungarian Criminal Code. Orbán, near Netanyahu ally, described at the time the arrest warrant of “shameless and cynical”.
In addition, the Hungarian government argued that the Court based in The Hague “has no right to process Netanyahu, defending Israel acting in legitimate defense against the attacks of the Hamas Islamist group.
Hungary signed the Rome Statute in 1999 and ratified it in 2001, during Orbán’s first mandate as Prime Minister, but has not recognized in his Criminal Code the provisions of the CPI.
Hungary already pointed out in February this year that he would reconsider his cooperation with the ICC, shortly after the US president Donald Trump announced sanctions against the Court.
Hungary: Third country that leaves the Court, after Burundi and the Philippines; And the first in the EU
That court “has recently become a tendentious political tool and has discredited to the entire international legal system,” Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjjartó said. To date, only two countries have abandoned the ICC: Burundi in 2017 and the Philippines in 2019.
Founded in 2002, the Court currently has 125 Member States and has the mandate to prosecute the most serious crimes – Genocide, war crimes and humanity lesa – when states are not willing or cannot do so by themselves.
Hungary becomes the first country of the European Union to initiate an exit process from the International Court, in a more signal of the growing distancing of Budapest with respect to the consensus of the community block.
