THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — After giving a red carpet welcome this week to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity in Gaza, Hungary announced it would quit the court.
Should Hungary follow through with its withdrawal from the world’s only permanent global court for war crimes and genocide, it will become only the third country in the institution’s history of more than 20 years to do so. The process will take more than a year.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who gave the Israeli leader a welcome with full military honors on Thursday in defiance of the ICC arrest warrant, signed the Rome Statute, which established the court, during his first term in office.
The ICC was established in The Hague in 2002 as the court of last resort to prosecute individuals responsible for the world’s most heinous atrocities: war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and the crime of aggression. It takes on cases when nations are unable or unwilling to prosecute crimes on their territory.
Hungary signed the Rome Statute in 1999 and ratified the treaty on Nov. 30, 2001.
The court’s newest member, Ukraine, formally joined in January, bringing the number of member states to 125. The United States, Russia, China and Israel are among nations that are not members.
Judges at the court have issued 60 arrest warrants and convicted 11 people. Last month, the court arrested former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on murder charges linked to the deadly “war on drugs” that he oversaw while in office.
The Rome Statute lays out the steps a member state needs to take if they want to withdraw from the court. The state party must inform the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the withdrawal takes effect one year after the receipt of the notification.
Announcing it will leave, however, doesn’t free Hungary from its duties under the treaty.
“There is a provision which says that your obligation to cooperate continues for the cases that were ongoing when you were still a party,” Göran Sluiter, professor of international criminal law at the University of Amsterdam, told The Associated Press. “So they still have an ongoing obligation to arrest Netanyahu,” he said.
Zsolt Semjén, Hungary’s deputy prime minister, submitted a bill to parliament to approve the withdrawal, which is expected to pass.
Just two other countries have left the court. The East African nation of Burundi left in 2017 and, in 2019, then-President Duterte withdrew the Philippines after judges allowed the investigation into his drug crackdown that killed thousands to continue.
If Hungary leaves, it will become the only country in the European Union that is not a member of the court.
A three-judge panel issued arrest warrants in November for Netanyahu, his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas’ military chief, Mohammed Deif, accusing them of crimes against humanity in connection with the 13-month war in Gaza.
The warrants said there was reason to believe Netanyahu and Gallant have used “starvation as a method of warfare” by restricting humanitarian aid and intentionally targeted civilians in Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza, charges Israeli officials deny.
The warrant marked the first time a sitting leader of a major Western ally has been accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity by the global court of justice and has sparked major pushback from supporters of Israel, including the U.S.
The ICC criticized Hungary’s decision to defy its warrant for Netanyahu, with the court’s spokesperson, Fadi El Abdallah, saying on Thursday that the court “recalls that Hungary remains under a duty to cooperate with the ICC.”
Human rights groups also have condemned the move.
“Hungary still has the opportunity to arrest Netanyahu — as unlikely as that seems, there’s still time. We expect other ICC members and particularly EU member states who are united in their commitment to the court to press Hungary hard on meeting its clear, legal obligations on arrest,” Liz Evenson, international justice director at Human Rights Watch, told the AP.
Last year, Mongolia refused to arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin during a state visit. Judges ruled Mongolia had failed to comply with its obligations and referred the matter to the court’s oversight board, the Assembly of States Parties.
Associated Press reporter Justin Spike in Budapest contributed to this report.
FILE - A general view of the exterior of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, Wednesday, March 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Omar Havana, file)
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks on Thursday are giving back much of their historic gains from the day before as Wall Street weighs a global trade war that has cooled in temperature but is still confusing and threatening the economy.
The S&P 500 was down 4.1% in midday trading, a day after surging 9.5% following President Donald Trump’s decision to pause many of his tariffs worldwide. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 1,383 points, or 3.4%, as of 11:45 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 4.8% lower.
Even a better-than-expected report on inflation Thursday morning wasn’t enough to get U.S. stocks to add to their surges from the day before. Economists said the data wasn’t very useful because it offered a view only of the past, when inflation may rise in coming months because of tariffs.
“Trump blinks,” UBS strategist Bhanu Baweja wrote in a report about the president’s decision on tariffs, “but the damage isn’t all undone.”
Trump has focused more on China, raising his tariffs on its products to well above 100%. Even if that were to get negotiated down to something like 50%, and even if only 10% tariffs remained on other countries, Baweja said the hit to the U.S. economy could still be large enough to hurt expected growth for upcoming U.S. corporate profits.
U.S. stocks accelerated their losses Thursday after the White House clarified that Chinese imports will be tariffed at 145%, not the 125% rate that Trump had written about in his posting on Truth Social Wednesday, once his previous 20% fentanyl tariffs were included.
“Everything is still very volatile, because with Donald Trump, you don’t know what to expect,” said Francis Lun, chief executive of Geo Securities. “This is really big uncertainty in the market. The threat of recession has not faded.”
China, meanwhile, has reached out to other countries around the world in hopes of forming a united front against Trump.
The stock price of Warner Brothers Discovery, the company behind “A Minecraft Movie,” dropped 13.2% for one of Wall Street's sharpest losses after China said Thursday it will “appropriately reduce the number of imported U.S. films.” The Walt Disney Co.'s stock sank 7%
A spokesperson for the China Film Administration said it is “inevitable” that Chinese audiences would find American films less palatable given the “wrong move by the U.S. to wantonly implement tariffs on China."
That was after Trump and his Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, sent a clear message to other countries Wednesday after announcing their tariff pause: “Do not retaliate, and you will be rewarded.”
The European Union on Thursday said it will put its trade retaliation measures on hold for 90 days and leave room for a negotiated solution.
It all demonstrates why many on Wall Street are preparing for more swings to hit markets, after the S&P 500 at one point nearly dropped into a “bear market” by almost closing 20% below its record. Often, the whipsaw moves have come not just day to day but also hour to hour. The S&P 500 still remains below where it was when Trump announced his sweeping set of tariffs last week on “Liberation Day.”
One encouraging signal had been coming from the bond market, where stress seemed to be easing.
The bond market has historically played the role of enforcer against politicians and economic policies it deemed imprudent. It helped topple the United Kingdom's Liz Truss in 2022, for example, whose 49 days made her Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister. James Carville, adviser to former U.S. President Bill Clinton, also famously said he'd like to be reincarnated as the bond market because of how much power it wields.
Earlier this week, big jumps for U.S. Treasury yields had rattled the market, so much that Trump said Wednesday he had been watching how investors were “getting a little queasy.”
Several reasons could have been behind the sharp, sudden rise, including hedge funds having to sell their Treasurys in order to raise cash or investors outside the United States dumping their U.S. investments because of the trade war. Regardless of the reasons behind it, higher yields on Treasurys crank up pressure on the stock market and push rates higher for mortgages and other loans for U.S. households and businesses.
But the 10-year Treasury yield has calmed over the last day, following Trump's U-turn on tariffs, and had fallen all the way back to 4.30% shortly after the release of the U.S. inflation data. That’s after it had shot up to nearly 4.50% Wednesday morning from just 4.01% at the end of last week.
But the yield began climbing again as the morning progressed, reaching 4.37%.
In stock markets abroad, indexes rallied across Europe and Asia in their first chances to trade following Trump’s pause. Japan’s Nikkei 225 surged 9.1%, South Korea’s Kospi leaped 6.6% and Germany’s DAX returned 5.4%.
AP writers Yuri Kageyama, Matt Ott and Huizhong Wu contributed.
Trader Jonathan Mueller works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday, April 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Traders Bryan Masseria, left and Columb Lytle work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday, April 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Trader Fred Demarco, right, works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday, April 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Specialist Michael Gagliano works at his post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday, April 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
A pair of traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday, April 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday, April 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Trader John Bishop works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday, April 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
People walk by the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday morning, April 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
People walk by an electronic board showing Japan's Nikkei 225 index at a securities firm in Tokyo Thursday, April 10, 2025. (Kyodo News via AP)
A person walks past an electronic stock board at a securities firm in Tokyo Thursday, April 10, 2025. (Kyodo News via AP)
A currency trader walks by the screens showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), left, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at a foreign exchange dealing room in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, April 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
A currency trader watches computer monitors at a foreign exchange dealing room in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, April 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
A currency trader walks by the screens showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), left, the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won and the Korean Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (KOSDAQ) at a foreign exchange dealing room in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, April 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
A currency trader prepares to work near the screens showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at a foreign exchange dealing room in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, April 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
A currency trader watches computer monitors near the screen showing the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at a foreign exchange dealing room in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, April 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
President Donald Trump is displayed on a television on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Wednesday, April 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
A traders works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Wednesday, April 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
