The EU has been urged to hit back at Donald Trump’s administration’s sanctions campaign against the International Criminal Court – by invoking a little-known ‘blocking statute’ that would ban companies and banks from complying with the sanctions.
The Trump administration has stepped up its campaign to break the Hague-based court by withdrawing from the Rome Statute that created it and urging its allies to do the same.
And last week, US secretary of state Marco Rubio announced the imposition of sanctions including asset freezes and financial sanctions on 18 August, targeting the ICC’s president Judge Tomoko Akane and Abdoulaye Seye of Senegal, a senior trial lawyer in the court’s prosecution office.
Rubio called the ICC a “corrupt and fatally-politicised supranational court”.
Though US officials have rarely been targeted by ICC indictments, Rubio’s move is part of a broader Trump administration push to undermine the UN and other multilateral organisations.
