Hungary says it will withdraw from ICC as Israel’s Netanyahu visits

Hungary’s government has announced it will withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC), just before Prime Minister Viktor Orban was to receive his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu, the subject of an ICC arrest warrant.

“Hungary exits the International Criminal Court. The government will initiate the withdrawal procedure on Thursday, in accordance with the constitutional and international legal framework,” Orban’s chief of staff Gergely Gulyas posted on Facebook on Thursday.

Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orban had raised the prospect of the country’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 withdrawal bill is likely to be approved by Hungary’s parliament that is dominated by Orban’s Fidesz party.

The ICC has not yet commented on Hungary’s announcement.

A state’s withdrawal from the court also takes effect only one year after the deposit of the withdrawal’s instrument – usually in the form of a formal letter declaring the pullout – with the UN Secretary General’s office.

So far only Burundi and the Philippines have withdrawn from the court.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu walk on the red carpet during a welcoming ceremony at the Lion’s Courtyard in Budapest, Hungary [Bernadett Szabo/Reuters]

Meanwhile, prime minister Netanyahu arrived in Budapest early Thursday morning on his first trip to Europe since 2023 and in defiance of the ICC’s arrest warrant against him over alleged war crimes in Gaza.

Israel has rejected the court’s accusations, which it says are politically motivated and fuelled by antisemitism. It says the ICC has lost all legitimacy by issuing the warrants against a democratically elected leader of a country exercising the right of self defence.

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

Orban had vowed the EU member would not execute the warrant, despite being an ICC member, saying the court’s decision “intervenes in an ongoing conflict… for political purposes”.

The Hague-based ICC criticised Hungary’s decision to defy its warrant for Netanyahu.

ICC judges said when they issued the warrant that there were reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and his former defence 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”.

However, the court’s spokesperson, Fadi El Abdallah, said that it is not for parties to the ICC “to unilaterally determine the soundness of the Court’s legal decisions”.

Hungary signed the Rome Statute, the international treaty that created the ICC, in 1999 and ratified it two years later during Orban’s first term in office.

Gulyas 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.