Hungary announces it will quit International Criminal Court as Netanyahu visits Budapest

Hungary has decided that the country will withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC), the government said on Thursday, shortly after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in the country for a state visit.

"The government will initiate the withdrawal procedure on Thursday, in accordance with the constitutional and international legal framework," said Gergely Gulyás, chief of staff for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

The ICC has faced increasing controversy in recent years, in particular because of the arrest warrants issued against Russian President Vladimir Putin and Netanyahu.

Israel's PM arrived in the Hungarian capital, Budapest, on Wednesday despite an ICC warrant against him over his conduct of the war in the Gaza Strip.

Gulyás criticised the ICC for supposedly deviating from its original purpose and becoming a "political body", citing the arrest warrant against Netanyahu.

He argued that since Hungary has never enshrined the ICC's founding 1998 Rome Statute in domestic law, the court's arrest warrants cannot be executed in the country.

Gulyás referred to the fact that the world's major military powers have never been members of the ICC, and that the US has imposed sanctions on the organisation.

Gulyás also pointed to Poland, where Prime Minister Donald Tusk said in January that Netanyahu would not be arrested if he visited a Auschwitz memorial event, despite the ICC warrant against him.

Issued in November, the ICC warrant said there was reason to believe Netanyahu and former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant used "starvation as a method of warfare" by restricting humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, and intentionally targeted civilians in Israel’s campaign against Hamas — charges that Israeli officials deny.

In response to the warrant, Orbán invited Netanyahu for a state visit and accused the ICC of "interfering in an ongoing conflict for political purposes," saying the move undermined international law and escalated tensions.

The first country to leave the ICC was Burundi, in 2017. South Africa and the Gambia have both threatened to leave, but have reversed or halted their decisions to do so. All three states claim the court is biased against African countries.

The Philippines left the court in 2019, but its former president, Rodrigo Duterte is under arrest and currently facing prosecution on murder charges stemming from his infamous "war on drugs".