A spokesperson for the EU has pushed back against the Trump administration’s assertion that the international criminal court poses a threat to US sovereignty, a day after the US government said it would work to “systematically disable” a global tribunal that seeks to prosecute the perpetrators of the world’s gravest crimes.
Anouar El Anouni, an EU spokesperson, said on Tuesday: “We stand firm in our support for the international criminal court (ICC). Attacks or threats against the court, elected officials, personnel or those cooperating with the court are simply not acceptable.”
El Anouni pointed to the court’s role in pursuing the perpetrators of some of the world’s gravest crimes, from genocide to war crimes. He said: “Let’s also recall that the ICC does not target sovereign states, nor does it constitute a threat to their sovereignty.”
Instead, he added, it “exercises jurisdiction over individuals, perpetrators of the most serious crimes of concern to the international community”.
Since Donald Trump returned to power last year, his administration has steadily worked to hobble The Hague-based court. So far, 11 of the court’s officials – including the chief prosecutor and eight judges – have been placed under US sanctions, leaving them grappling with cancelled credit cards, Amazon and Google accounts, as well as US travel bans.
Monday’s announcement, however, marked a dramatic escalation. In a video published on Monday, Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, claimed that the court “threatens every aspect of our political and legal system”. In an accompanying op-ed, he invoked images of US border patrol agents and elected leaders being “dragged before an international court” and tried by judges from around the world.
The US state department said in a statement that the campaign against the court would take a “wide range of actions”, including potentially pressuring other nations to withdraw from the ICC and “increased scrutiny” of the countries that refuse to do so while relying on US assistance.
Countries that could be affected by these measures include Ukraine, where the ICC launched an investigation in 2022 into possible war crimes following Russia’s invasion.
Legal experts described Rubio’s remarks as a mischaracterisation of the tribunal’s powers.
The court can investigate alleged crimes committed in countries that have signed up to it, or crimes committed by citizens of those countries. It can also investigate cases referred by the UN security council, or where a country not signed up agrees to let it act.
But the court is only supposed to step in when a country cannot or will not investigate the crimes itself. The US has not signed up to the court.
For US citizens abroad, chances are slim of being put on trial by the court, as about 100 countries have signed agreements with the US to refrain from surrendering Americans to the court.
Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, said: “The ICC is not claiming jurisdiction over conduct in the United States. Rubio is dressing up his quest for impunity for American war crimes under the label of national sovereignty, which ignores the sovereign right of other nations to invoke the ICC for crimes committed on their territory.”
A former senior US government sanctions official suggested that the Trump administration was looking to curtail the possibility of investigations into its actions. “It gives you the sense that this is a pre-emptive campaign against any action the ICC might be considering vis-a-vis Venezuela or elsewhere abroad,” the official said.
This sense was reinforced by Rubio, who, in his op-ed, cited calls from activists and others for the court to prosecute the Trump administration for actions such as the deportation of migrants or US strikes on boats that officials have claimed are carrying narcotics.
Roth went further, citing concerns that the Trump administration could also be looking to ward off scrutiny for future actions. He said: “Trump wants to be able to commit war crimes on the territory of countries that have accepted the court’s jurisdiction – that’s what this is about.”