Hungary says it will withdraw from the ICC while the visits of Israel Netanyahu | News ICC

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban had raised the perspective of leaving the ICC after US President Donald Trump imposed sanctions in court.

The government of Hungary announced its withdrawal from the International Criminal Court (ICC), just before Prime Minister Viktor Orban received his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, the subject of an ICC arrest warrant.

“Hungary leaves the International Criminal Court. The government will launch the withdrawal procedure on Thursday, in accordance with the constitutional and international legal framework, ”published the chief of staff of Orban on Thursday, Gergely Gulyas, published on Facebook.

Orban had raised the prospect of the exit from the country of the ICC after the American president Donald Trump imposed sanctions on the court prosecutor, Karim Khan, in February. “It is time for Hungary to review what we do in an international organization that is under American sanctions,” said Orban on X in February.

The withdrawal bill is likely to be approved by the Parliament of Hungary, which is dominated by the Fidesz Party of Orban. The ICC has not yet commented on the announcement of Hungary.

The withdrawal of a state of the court also does not take effect a year after the filing of the withdrawal instrument – generally in the form of an official letter declaring withdrawal – with the office of the United Nations Secretary General.

So far, only Burundi and the Philippines have withdrawn from the court.

Netanyahu arrived in Budapest early Thursday morning during his first trip to Europe since 2023 in defiance of the CPI arrest warrant against him for alleged war crimes in Gaza.

Israel has rejected the accusations of the Court, which they believe are politically motivated and fueled by anti -Semitism. He indicates that the ICC has lost all legitimacy by emitting mandates against a democratically elected leader of a country exercising the right of self -defense.

Orban extended an invitation to Netanyahu last November, one day after the ICC issued the arrest warrant.

He had declared that the member of the European Union would not execute the mandate, although he is a member of the ICC, claiming that the court’s decision “comes in an in progress … for political purposes”.

The Hague -based court has criticized Hungary’s decision to challenge its mandate for Netanyahu.

The judges of the ICC said that when they expressed the mandate, there were reasonable reasons to believe that Netanyahu and his former defense chief were criminally responsible for acts, in particular murder, persecution and famine as a war as a “widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population of Gaza”.

However, the court spokesman Fadi El Abdallah said that it was not for the parties to the ICC “to unilaterally determine the solidity of the legal decisions of the Court”.

Hungary signed the status of Rome, the international treaty which created the ICC in 1999 and ratified it two years later during the first mandate of Orban.

Gulyas, the Orban assistant, said in November that although Hungary has ratified the Rome status of the ICC, it “has never been part of the Hungarian law”, which means that no measure of the court can be carried out in Hungary.