EU rejects Trump administration claims that ICC threatens US sovereignty

A spokesperson for the EU said: ‘The ICC does not target sovereign states, nor does it constitute a threat to their sovereignty.’ Photograph: Peter Dejong/Pool AP/AP View image in fullscreen A spokesperson for the EU said: ‘The ICC does not target sovereign states, nor does it constitute a threat to their sovereignty.’ Photograph: Peter Dejong/Pool AP/AP EU rejects Trump administration claims that ICC threatens US sovereignty US government says it wants to ‘systematically disable’ The Hague-based international criminal court 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 some of the world’s gravest crimes. “We stand firm in our support for the international criminal court (ICC),” an EU spokesperson, Anouar El Anouni, said on Tuesday. “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. “And let’s also recall that the ICC does not target sovereign states, nor does it constitute a threat to their sovereignty,” he said. Marco Rubio launches campaign to dismantle international criminal court Read more 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”, while 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 only investigate crimes committed in states that are party to the Rome statute, th