KEY INSIGHTS
- A court under siege: The United States has sanctioned nine of the ICC’s 18 judges and four other officials, and is now preparing sanctions against the institution itself.
- Europe’s untested shield: The 1996 blocking statute bans EU operators from complying with listed foreign sanctions and lets them claim damages, yet it has never been applied to the court.
- Why this time is different: Firms supplying catering or electricity to The Hague have far less to lose in the United States than banks trading with Iran, so the statute could finally bite.
- A fast track exists: Adding the US sanctions to the statute is a delegated act the Commission can adopt without a positive vote from the Council or the Parliament.
- Caution has failed: From Turnberry to Gaza, the Commission’s low profile has only emboldened Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu.
The International Criminal Court is one of the cornerstones of the rules-based international order that the European Union wants to uphold. It is, however, under threat of dismantling by President Donald Trump. With the “blocking statute” adopted in 1996, the EU would have the means to protect this institution, which is based on its territory. Even though this tool has shown significant limitations in the past, the EU should activate it without delay to counter United States sanctions.
After the Second World War, the international community established the International Court of Justice (ICJ), headquartered in The Hague in the Netherlands. It was intended to facilitate the peaceful resolution of disputes between states. Its actual impact has since been severely limited, however, by the fact that its jurisdiction rests on the consent of states: unless a state has accepted the Court’s jurisdiction in advance, it cannot be brought before the ICJ against its will.
At the same time, the international tribunals in Nuremberg and Tokyo were tasked with determining individual responsibility for the atrocities committed during the Second World War. Subsequently, other ad hoc international tribunals were established to try war crimes or crimes against humanity committed in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, or Sierra Leone.
Despite several attempts, however, the tensions of the Cold War prevented the creation of a permanent, universal court to try individuals responsible for crimes of aggression, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the period of détente that followed in the 1990s made it possible to revive international negotiations on this issue. These negotiations culminated in the treaty known as the Rome Statute, so called because it was signed in Rome in 1998. It established the International Criminal Court, which is also headquartered in The Hague. The adoption of this Statute marked a major step forward for the rules-based international order that the EU has championed since its inception.
After ratification by 60 states, the Statute entered into force in 2002, and the ICC’s first trial opened in 2009. Over the past 24 years, the Court has initiated prosecutions for crimes committed in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, the Central African Republic, Kenya, Libya, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Georgia, Burundi, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Palestine, the Philippines, Venezuela, and Ukraine. Notably, in 2023, it indicted Vladimir Putin for the abduction of Ukrainian children. Ten people have so far been convicted of war crimes or crimes against humanity, all of them for crimes committed in Africa.
Of the 193 United Nations member states, 125 have ratified the Rome Statute to date, including all EU member states. A further 29 states, however, including Russia and the United States, signed the treaty but ultimately never ratified it. China and India, meanwhile, have never signed it at all. This is a key reason why the ICC has so far been unable to address the genocide of the Uyghurs, a fact for which it is often wrongly criticised: China is simply not a party to the Rome Statute. Of the five permanent members of the Security Council, three do not recognise the ICC’s jurisdiction.
Donald Trump Wants the Court Destroyed
Far from merely refusing to recognise the ICC’s jurisdiction, the Trump administration has now officially set itself the goal of destroying the institution, following the arrest warrants issued in November 2024 against Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and Yoav Gallant, his defence minister at the time, as well as against the Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif, since confirmed dead, for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed on 7 October 2023 and in Gaza thereafter. The prosecutor had also sought warrants against two other Hamas leaders but withdrew those requests after their deaths. Israel is not a party to the Rome Statute, but the State of Palestine is: it ratified the treaty in 2015, hence the Court’s jurisdiction.
Following these arrest warrants, a fierce campaign was launched against Karim Khan, the British prosecutor at the ICC who had indicted Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant. He was accused of sexual misconduct and abuse of power towards one of his assistants. Following an internal United Nations investigation, an independent panel of three judges selected by the Bureau of the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute found in March 2026, in a non-binding opinion, that these allegations were not sufficiently substantiated and that Karim Khan could resume his duties. Despite this, and in a climate of intense US pressure on the Court, the Assembly of States Parties to the treaty decided last July to remove him from his post, with 82 of the 125 states parties voting in favour.
At the same time, the US government has already imposed sanctions on nine of the 18 judges, including the court’s president, Tomoko Akane of Japan, and the French judge Nicolas Guillou, as well as on four other ICC officials: its former prosecutor Karim Khan, both deputy prosecutors, and the Senegalese senior trial lawyer Abdoulaye Seye. This effectively deprives them of access to their credit cards, to all Microsoft software and, more generally, to all services provided by US companies.
President Donald Trump also regularly calls on countries to withdraw from the ICC. He did so again last week at the UN General Assembly. So far this year, six states have moved to leave the ICC: Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger in June; Venezuela and Chad in July; and Nauru last week. In recent days, Donald Trump and his administration have escalated their vendetta against the ICC by now threatening to sanction the institution itself.
This campaign against the ICC, a pillar of the rules-based international order, has now been going on for nearly two years. Beyond statements of principle, the European Union has so far taken no measures to protect this court, which is based on its territory, and its judges, some of whom are EU nationals, from US sanctions. This is despite numerous requests, particularly from the European Parliament and, in recent days, from the Dutch government. Yet it has both the opportunity and the means to do so.
Europe Already Holds the Weapon It Needs
In 1996, following extraterritorial sanctions imposed by the United States against Iran, Cuba, and Libya, the European Union adopted a “blocking statute”. This statute was strengthened in 2018, following Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the international agreement on Iran’s nuclear programme. Its aim is to protect European entities from the effects of such extraterritorial sanctions: the statute prohibits European operators from complying with the foreign laws that impose them and authorises those operators to claim damages if they suffer losses as a result.
The statute has already been invoked in connection with US sanctions against Cuba and Iran since 2018. Its impact, however, has remained very limited in both cases, because most European companies have nevertheless chosen to comply with US sanctions and to cease doing business with Iran and Cuba rather than risk losing their business in the United States. It is reasonable to assume, however, that the situation could be different when it comes to the ICC, for the European companies that might provide catering, electricity, or other basic services to the criminal court, if the EU were to prohibit compliance with US sanctions.
Adding the US sanctions to the statute’s annex is what is known in European jargon as a “delegated act”. This means that the European Commission needs no positive vote from the Council or the European Parliament. Such a decision can be blocked only if, within two months, the Parliament objects by a majority of its members or the Council does so by a qualified majority (a vote by representatives of 55 per cent of the member states accounting for at least 65 per cent of the EU’s population), an unlikely scenario. In other words, if the European Commission decided to oppose US sanctions, such measures could take effect within two months throughout the Union.
On all issues concerning relations with Donald Trump and his administration, the European Commission has so far tended to keep a low profile. This was particularly the case in the summer of 2025 at Turnberry, when Ursula von der Leyen yielded to virtually all US demands on trade. Similarly, it has always exercised the utmost caution on issues concerning the abuses of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. This extreme caution, however, has had only one result so far: it has encouraged both Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu to go even further, particularly against the ICC.
Unless the Union wishes to bring disgrace upon itself and hasten the collapse of the rules-based international order, which has been its raison d’être for 70 years, it can no longer postpone the showdown with Donald Trump over the International Criminal Court: the European Union must activate the “blocking statute” without further delay. And it must take the necessary steps to ensure that this time, the statute fulfils its function in full.
