Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said Hungary will not participate in the future operations of the International Criminal Court, a body "which has been degraded into a political tool and has lost its prestige."
In his introduction to a bill on terminating Hungary's ICC membership, Minister Szijjártó told MPs on Tuesday that Hungary signed the ICC's Rome Statue in 1999, and while the Hungarian parliament confirmed the document in 2001, it was not promulgated into Hungarian law.
Even so, terminating the country's membership must be approved by parliament, he said. Once that decision is passed, a written notification will be sent to the Secretary-General of the United Nations. The decision to quit will become effective a year later, he added.
Hungary in general opposes "politicising the operation of international organisations", the minister said, adding that the practice "has been seen on a number of occasions..."
"It is clear that if there is a conflict between nations or countries, everybody tries to politicise international organisations so that they can be used for their own political purposes," Minister Szijjártó said.
"We have always rejected that. International organisations are never set up for some political purpose, or out of political interest, but to provide appropriate international platforms and opportunities for dialogue in a given area, even to parties engaged in a conflict," the minister said. That, he added, was especially true of UN institutions, which, contrary to the European Union or NATO, were set up to ensure dialogue between adversaries.
In international legal organisations or courts, "there is no room for politics or geopolitical considerations", he said, adding that "serious concerns have been raised recently in connection with the ICC being impartial and free from politics".
"By now, those concerns have been proven, and it has become clear that the ICC has been degraded into a political tool," Minister Szijjártó said. "It has lost its reputation, esteem, and even its seriousness," he said, slamming the body for issuing an international warrant against the head of state and the former defence minister of Israel.
"When the ICC realised that they had overshot the mark with that move, they tried to correct themselves, but made a mistake again when they issued a warrant for a Hamas leader who was already dead," Minister Szijjártó said.
"Hungary does not wish to be part of the ICC's politically motivated actions in future," the minister said.