The possibility mentioned in the title has been mentioned more and more in the press, so it may be worthy to take a look into that. The fact is that for Viktor Orbán, it would mean a very serious diplomatic success from a political point of view, which can easily be converted into an excellent domestic political advantage with the next year’s Hungarian elections: look all, important things are happening and being decided here, organised by me, and in the event of successful negotiations, Budapest could literally write itself into the great books of diplomacy and history by achieving the Budapest Peace or Ceasefire (forget the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 now, please). This would be important for him not only from a foreign but also from a domestic political point of view, as he could use it to support his problematic foreign policy shifts and often incoherent steps of recent years.
Moreover, the biggest shame of the recent years, which I have also been constantly and intensely criticizing – the withdrawal from the International Criminal Court (ICC) – would become understandable here. Make no mistake, my position on the matter remains unchanged in principle, but the step, if still not moral, could become practically and politically defensible in the case of such a major diplomatic success. There is a good chance that the Russian president would not come to an EU member state that would be obliged to arrest him, but – Hungarian diplomacy and Viktor Orbán may reason – if the danger of that no longer exists, then there is no obstacle to the meeting on Hungarian territory. And that is why it may be worthy to accept the political-diplomatic inconveniences, especially since there were no particularly major disadvantages to be countered: the International Criminal Court ruled that Hungary had violated the provisions of the Rome Statue, the founding treaty of the ICC by not arresting Netanyahu, and did the only thing it could do, expressed its sorrow and pain to the Assembly of States Parties, where nothing happened – as usual. The European Union is also – for now – silent on the issue, apparently the EU institutions are not bothered enough by the violation of one of the very few common foreign policy values to do something, it’s not even impossible, that they partly share the Hungarian government’s plans and don’t want to get in the way of those. We don’t know this, it’s not important, the point is that they did not make this foreign policy step “more expensive”.
So, it may seem that this might even be possible. However, as always, the calculation may be wrong again.
As I said at the time, several times, in several places, leaving the International Criminal Court will not happen overnight. After the document on the withdrawal has been received by the UN Secretary-General, the ICC statute will still be binding on the state party for one more year, so its binding force will not cease until next summer, to be precise, June 2, 2026. However, the elections in Hungary next year will take place before that, so such a possible diplomatic success will not be useful there, and it is not worth expecting that the Russian side will put aside its worries, and certainly not that the Ukrainian side, striving for European integration, will take part in such a dog comedy. The painful reality is that Viktor Orbán is not worth it to anyone to deviate from his own safe path. However, if the Hungarian government is thinking in the longer term, this may still seem like a feasible solution for it (a meeting in Budapest in the fall of 2026), and although the practice so far does not fundamentally allow us to conclude this, it cannot be ruled out that it will be able to let go of thinking strictly in terms of election cycles in the field of foreign policy. This is not far from the political profile of Viktor Orbán in recent years, and if we assume that news related to the preparation of the meeting may also have political communication value, then such a solution is not unrealistic either.
Especially in light of the fact that one can essentially rejoin the International Criminal Court system at any time for free… At this point, I would refer to what the President of the Assembly of States Parties said when he commented on the withdrawal of Hungary: “I truly hope that Hungary’s withdrawal from the Rome Statute is not permanent, but just a brief pause to its commitment to international justice”. So the next question may be whether it is fortunate for states to abandon their “commitment to international justice” due to their current foreign policy interests. This is not just a theoretical-philosophical problem, as representatives of the Hungarian government have also continuously contrasted the values of “justice” and “peace” in their communication on the subject of the International Criminal Court, reflecting (even if unknowingly) on the possibility included in Article 16 of the Rome Statute (criticized by many from the beginning), according to which the UN Security Council can suspend any investigation or proceeding before the International Criminal Court at any time if it deems it necessary in the interests of maintaining international peace and security.
So the question, to which the future will provide the answer, is whether the Hungarian government only wanted to make such a quick turn, and whether we consider the possibility of such turns to be a good one at all.
Lattmann Tamás honlapja 