Status: 03/23/2023 5:08 p.m
Russian President Putin would probably not have to fear an arrest warrant if he visited Budapest. According to the government in Budapest, there is no legal basis for enforcement. Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Baerbock insists on implementation.
Hungary apparently wants to ignore the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Putin would not be arrested if he came to Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s chief of staff Gergely Gulyas told a news conference in Budapest. There is no legal basis for the execution of the arrest warrant. Hungary has signed and ratified the Rome Statute as the contractual basis of the International ICC. However, it has not been integrated into the Hungarian legal system, said Gulyas. On the basis of Hungarian law, Putin cannot be arrested.
When asked, Gulyas said the government in Budapest had not formed an opinion on the arrest warrant against Putin. However, his personal opinion is that these decisions are not very happy as they lead things towards a further escalation and not towards peace.
Ratification Act was never countersigned
In 1999 Hungary signed the Rome Statute of the ICC, it was ratified in 2001 and the relevant documents were deposited at the seat of the Court in the same year. At the same time, changing conservative presidents failed to countersign the ratification law. They referred to alleged incompatibilities with the Hungarian constitution. The ICC regards Hungary as a signatory state and thus bound by the statute. The matter is controversial among Hungarian lawyers.
On Friday, the ICC issued an arrest warrant against Putin and his child rights commissioner, Maria Alexeyevna Lvowa-Belowa, for the alleged kidnapping of thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia. While Ukraine welcomed the arrest warrant, Russia rejected the allegations – and threatened the contracting states of the ICC.
ICC contracting states complain about threats from Russia
Yesterday, the presidency of the Assembly of States Parties to the ICC said the panel regrets “attempts to obstruct international efforts to establish criminal liability for acts prohibited under general international law.” According to the presidency, there were “threats” against the court as well as “threats of measures against investigators and judges”. The assembly, which brings together all 123 States Parties to the ICC, reiterated their “unwavering support” for the Criminal Court.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has warned that arresting Putin abroad as a result of the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant would be a declaration of war on his country. “For example, an incumbent president of a nuclear power comes to Germany and is arrested. What is that? A declaration of war on the Russian Federation,” Medvedev told the state news agency Tass. Should an arrest take place in Germany, for example, “all our weapons, missiles and others, will fly to the Bundestag, the Chancellery and so on,” Medvedev said.
“Nobody is above the Charter of the United Nations”
Regardless of the Russian threats, Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock once again supported the international arrest warrant. “Nobody is above the United Nations Charter, nobody is above international humanitarian law, nobody can go unpunished in committing war crimes, crimes against humanity,” said the Green politician after meeting her Macedonian colleague Bujar Osmani in the capital Skopje.
Germany defends the United Nations Charter, stressed the German Foreign Minister. That is why we stand wholeheartedly behind the International Criminal Court, which was created to ensure that war crimes did not go unpunished. “Sometimes it takes time, sometimes it takes decades,” said Baerbock. But for this reason Germany has unreservedly supported the International Criminal Court in The Hague in recent years.
After Omar al-Bashir of Sudan and Muammar al-Gaddafi of Libya, Putin is the third head of state against whom an ICC arrest warrant was issued during his tenure. The criminal court is supported by 123 states, Russia is not among them. It has no police force of its own and relies on its member states to arrest and transfer suspects.