Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whose country holds the EU’s rotating presidency, on Friday said he would invite Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu to visit and defy an ICC arrest warrant.
Orban called the ICC’s decision “outrageously brazen and “cynical”, saying it “intervenes in an ongoing conflict… dressed up as a legal decision, but in fact for political purposes”.
“There is no choice here, we have to defy this decision,” the nationalist leader said in his weekly interview with state radio.
“Later today, I will invite the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr. Netanyahu, to visit Hungary, where I will guarantee him, if he comes, that the judgment of the International Criminal Court will have no effect in Hungary, and that we will not follow its terms,” he added.
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.
However, Budapest has not promulgated the associated convention for reasons of constitutionality and therefore asserts that it is not obliged to comply with ICC decisions.