Hungary Is Right: The ICC Should Be Dismantled

Hungary has recently decided to withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC), with the decision confirmed by the country’s parliament in late April. In Italy, Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini has praised the Hungarian decision, calling it “a sovereign and courageous choice.” He’s right: Budapest’s decision is not merely a diplomatic snub; it is a commendable assertion of national sovereignty against a leftover of the decaying globalist order. 

Founded in the early days of “end of History” euphoria, the ICC was sold to the world as a guarantor of universal justice and a mechanism to hold the world’s tyrants to account. Yet, in practice, it has morphed into a highly politicised instrument, infringing on the autonomy of nations and browbeating them into—liberal—ideological conformity. Hungary is right in wanting to break free from its control.

The ICC’s foundational design flaw lies in its assault on national sovereignty. Nations are only meaningfully sovereign entities when and if they are answerable to their own laws and to the interests of their people. The ICC, however, absurdly claims a global and supranational authority, asserting the right to prosecute individuals—often state officials—without regard for domestic legal systems. Incredibly—indeed, illegally—itt claims jurisdiction even over states that are not signatories of the Rome Statute that created the Court. This is hardly justice; it is overreach. And it is unacceptable. 

While Budapest’s decision was more immediately caused by the Court’s attempts to force Hungary to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, whom the Court accuses of war crimes, the ICC’s presumption puts it irredeemably at odds with any government that takes its own independence seriously. 

For Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a leader with a fierce sense of national dignity and independence, such external meddling is understandably intolerable. When the ICC issues warrants or demands compliance, it effectively demands that nations subordinate their own judicial processes to a distant, unaccountable body in The Hague. This is not a court of last resort but a court of first imposition. It erodes the very principle of self-governance and strong-arms nations into acting against their best interests. Why, indeed, should any state be forbidden from following the diplomatic strategy that more effectively advances its sovereign values and preferences just because a foreign judge, wholly unaccountable to it, so decides? Any country tolerating such a state of affairs would no longer be independent. It would be a vassal. 

That is to say nothing of the ICC’s blatant ideological bias, a recurring theme in its parody of justice. Since its inception in 2002, the Court has acted as the punishing sword of liberal hegemony, systematically targeting those loathed by bien-pensant, urbanite elites in the West. More than a few have wondered why the ICC, so keen to immerse itself in the Ukrainian and Gaza wars, never thought of investigating Tony Blair for his egregious crimes against international peace. This selective justice betrays a deeper agenda: the ICC serves as a tool for the liberal Establishment to persecute and intimidate those it dislikes while shielding its own. 

But, first and foremost, the ICC functions as a coercive force, pressuring nations to align with the globalist agenda of the day. Nations that resist the ICC’s demands risk ostracism, sanctions, or diplomatic isolation—tactics designed to silence, scare, and enforce compliance. 

The ICC isn’t just illegitimate or partial, though. The most convincing argument against it is its obsolescence. The Court is an increasingly solitary holdout of the days when it was fashionable to think that nations and peoples alike were things of the past, that borders meant nothing, and that all would be shattered by the unstoppable advance of globalism. Yet the post-1990s dream of a unipolar world governed by supranational institutions is crumbling at last. 

From Brexit to the rise of populist movements all over the West, nations are reasserting their right to chart their own paths. The ICC is wholly ill-suited to a multipolar world in which diverse civilisations increasingly require respect for their distinct legal and political traditions, as well as geopolitical preferences. Hungary’s move is not isolationism; it is a recognition that true justice is rooted in accountability and exercised in the name of a people, a demos—not on the unilateral whims of a globalist class representing nothing and no one but itself.

More nations should be following Hungary’s lead and abandon the ICC forthwith. The Court’s very existence is a disgrace. It perpetuates a delusion that should no longer poison international life: that a cohort of globalist judges, bound not to nation but to ideology, can—or, indeed, should—adjudicate the world’s conflicts. Instead, such a farce infringes on national self-determination while aggressively seeking to impose liberal uniformity. 

Dismantling the Court would not herald chaos, as foolishly claimed by its supporters. Rather, it would announce a return to the principle that nations, with systems answerable to their own people, are best equipped to deliver justice. In doing as it has, Budapest is giving the world a taste of the post-globalist world—a future where sovereignty prevails, not the hubris of supranational apparatchiki. Others should find the courage to join in before the ICC’s arrogance and bias inflict further harm on the world.