STATEMENT ON THE EU BLOCKING STATUTE AND THE DEFENSE OF THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT 

The Union of European Federalists (UEF) strongly condemns the White House's repeated interference and unjustified sanctions against the International Criminal Court, its judges, and prosecutors. We view these actions as unacceptable attacks on international justice. In response, UEF firmly supports the campaigns launched by the 'Coalition for the ICC,' as well as the 'Defend the ICC' campaign led by the activist organizations Eumans and No Peace Without Justice (NPWJ), demanding the immediate activation of the EU Blocking Statute (Council Regulation (EC) No 2271/96) to protect the International Criminal Court (ICC). 

The context 

On 13 July 2026 the U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal announcing that Washington will work to “systematically disable” and “dismantle the ICC, brick by brick, if necessary.” Rubio accused the Court of “waging a war against our country, not with bullets or missiles, but with the force of so-called international law,” and described it as an institution “backed and run by a powerful network of leftist nongovernmental organizations, smug globalists, and hostile Third World governments.” The State Department confirmed the campaign will expand sanctions, visa revocations, and travel bans against ICC judges, prosecutors, and affiliated organizations, while pressing allied governments — including EU Member States — to reject the Court’s jurisdiction or risk losing U.S. security cooperation. This marks a sharp escalation from targeted sanctions to an explicit, government-wide effort to incapacitate the Court altogether. 

In 2025, the U.S. administration under President Donald Trump escalated its assault on international justice by signing an executive order imposing extraterritorial sanctions on the ICC and its personnel. This egregious overreach included specific, targeted sanctions against four distinguished ICC judges: Solomy Balungi Bossa (Uganda), Luz del Carmen Ibáñez Carranza (Peru), Reine Adelaide Sophie Alapini Gansou (Benin), and Beti Hohler (Slovenia). 

The extraterritorial enforcement of these measures within the European Union is a clear violation of our legal and political autonomy. It attempts to compel EU-based entities to participate in a blockade against an international judicial body that the Union itself is bound by treaty to support. The EU Blocking Statute was designed precisely for this scenario in 1996: to protect European operators from the unlawful application of foreign legislation. 

The demand to shield the ICC is not new; it is rooted in the clear, established mandate of the European Parliament. Throughout 2025 and into 2026, the Parliament has exerted intense and sustained pressure on the European Commission to deploy this legal shield, echoing the demands of Member States like Slovenia, civil society organizations, and the ICC itself. 

This parliamentary pressure has been exhaustive and specific: 

• Urgent Parliamentary Questions: MEPs have repeatedly challenged the Commission’s inaction. In January 2025, a priority question (P-000121/2025), signed by dozens of MEPs, explicitly requested the urgent inclusion of U.S. sanctions against the ICC into the annex of the Blocking Statute via a delegated act. This was followed up in May 2025 (E-002163/2025) and again in early 2026 (E-000718/2026), demanding to know what concrete steps the Commission had taken to trigger the statute. 

• Resolutions and Formal Reports: The Parliament formally demanded the activation of the Blocking Statute in its April 2, 2025 resolution on Human Rights and Democracy in the World (Annual Report 2024, P10_TA(2025)0059). This unequivocal demand was subsequently reiterated in parliamentary resolutions adopted in July and September of 2025.  

Despite these clear directives, and despite public statements by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa, defending the ICC's independence from Washington's pressures, the executive is actively ignoring the repeated, explicit calls of the European Parliament.  

Therefore, the Union of European Federalists (UEF) firmly supports the mobilization led by Eumans and No Peace Without Justice (NPWJ) and the campaign of the Coalitions for ICC which calls for the immediate activation of the EU Blocking Statute (Council Regulation (EC) No 2271/96) to protect the International Criminal Court (ICC).