The presidents of the European Commission and Council, Ursula von der Leyen and António Costa, have issued words of support for the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) after the US administration announced it would sanction top officials investigating Israel’s actions in Gaza.
“The ICC helps deliver justice to the victims of some of the world’s most horrific crimes,” both EU leaders said in a statement.
“To carry out this essential work, its judges and officials must be able to act independently and without external pressure,” they added.
On Tuesday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the US would sanction the ICC’s president, Japan’s Tomoko Akane, and senior lawyer Abdoulaye Seye of Senegal, who was tasked with probing war crimes allegedly committed by Israel in its war in Gaza.
Rubio described the court as a “corrupt and fatally politicised supranational court that has maliciously abused its authority and exceeded its mandate”, adding that the US would “not tolerate its assault on state sovereignty”.
He went on to allege that both officials had engaged in efforts to “prosecute officials whose government has not consented to ICC jurisdiction”.
While neither Israel nor the US are member states of the ICC, Palestine has been a member since 2015, allowing the court to examine crimes allegedly committed on its territory.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Netherlands scathingly criticised the US’s move, with Foreign Minister Tom Berendsen saying that his government “disapproves” of the sanctions.
A German government spokesperson has also said Berlin stands by the ICC, adding that the court “has held accountable those guilty of the gravest crimes” and is “fulfilling its mandate exactly as intended”.
The ICC has described the sanctions as a “flagrant attack” on the court’s independence.
The Tuesday sanctions are the latest in a series of recent attempts by the Trump administration to discredit the Hague-based institution.
The US has already sanctioned as many as 11 top court officials, including its former chief prosecutor Karim Khan.
Rubio has previously spoken of the US’s wish to “dismantle” the court “brick by brick”, and has said he would urge the court’s member states to withdraw from the court’s Rome Statute.
Venezuela and Chad recently became the latest countries to announce they would pull out of the institution.
The previous Hungarian government led by Viktor Orbán also announced its intention to leave the ICC, before the decision was revoked following Prime Minister Péter Magyar’s landslide electoral win in April.
All 27 EU member states are ICC member states.
Yet, the court’s arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu continues to draw mixed and often ambiguous reactions from European officials, with countries including France, Germany and Italy refusing to commit publicly to enforcing the warrant should Netanyahu step on their territories.
Some senior MEPs called on the EU to go further in its condemnation of the new sanctions on Wednesday.
The president of the Socialists and Democrats group in the European Parliament, Iratze García, urged the bloc to activate the so-called Blocking Statute, a legal shield that would make it illegal for EU-based companies and banks to comply with the sanctions.
US sanctions have had a profound impact on the daily lives of ICC judges.
French judge Nicolas Guillou told Euronews ealier this year that the lack of European alternatives for crucial services meant that the restrictions he faced would be similar to “true civil death” for a younger European.