The European Union strongly supports the International Criminal Court, the head of the bloc's highest political body said on Friday, after US President Donald Trump's administration imposed sanctions on four judges at the court.
Antonio Costa, president of the European Council, which represents national governments of the 27 member states, said the court is "a cornerstone of international justice" and said its independence and integrity must be protected.
Costa spoke a day after Washington imposed sanctions on four judges at the ICC in unprecedented retaliation for the war tribunal's issuance of an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a past decision to open a case into alleged war crimes by US troops in Afghanistan.
The order names Solomy Balungi Bossa of Uganda, Luz del Carmen Ibanez Carranza of Peru, Reine Adelaide Sophie Alapini Gansou of Benin and Beti Hohler of Slovenia.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said these judges had "actively engaged in the ICC’s illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America or our close ally, Israel".
The ICC and some of its member states are urging the European Union to use its blocking statute, which bans any EU company from complying with US sanctions, to counter the sanctions.
"Due to the inclusion of a citizen of an EU member state on the sanctions list, Slovenia will propose the immediate activation of the blocking act," Slovenia's foreign ministry said in a post on social media site X, late Thursday.
ICC president Judge Tomoko Akane had urged the EU already in March this year to bring the ICC into the scope of the EU's blocking statute.
The new sanctions have been imposed at a difficult time for the ICC, which is already reeling from earlier US sanctions against its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, who last month stepped aside temporarily amid a United Nations investigation into alleged sexual misconduct.
