The International Criminal Court (ICC) is increasingly becoming Europeans’ “own personal court” as the US expands sanctions on the institution, an expert has told RT.
George Szamuely, a senior research fellow at the Global Policy Institute in Budapest, pointed out that major global powers such as the US, Russia, and China do not recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction, leaving European nations as its main backers.
“So essentially the ICC is becoming a European project,” he said.
Szamuely argued that the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to former ICC judge Navi Pillay underscored Europe’s support for the court.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded Pillay the prize on October 9, just hours before Washington imposed sanctions on the ICC as an institution, expanding measures that had previously targeted individual officials.
The ICC is now becoming increasingly the tool of the Europeans.
According to Szamuely, European lawmakers sought to reaffirm their backing for the court despite mounting pressure from Washington.
“The European Parliament wanted to send a message to the Trump administration… to say: ‘we thoroughly endorse the ICC. The ICC does our work’,” he said.
Szamuely noted that Washington’s “war against the ICC really intensified” during President Donald Trump’s first term, when the US sanctioned several court officials, including then-chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda.
“Now he has imposed much harsher sanctions against the ICC,” he said, arguing that the latest measures effectively impose secondary sanctions on “anyone who actually engages in any kind of dealings with the ICC.”
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