How much power does the ICC have to enforce arrest warrants?

What do Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have in common?

Both leaders have been issued with arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

In theory, ICC arrest warrants are legally binding on states that have ratified the court's founding 1998 Rome Statute. The court currently has 125 member states, including all EU nations, although United States, China and Russia are not members.

Netanyahu's trip to Hungary earlier this month marked his first visit to an ICC member state since the arrest warrant was issued against him in November 2024 for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the war between Israel and Hamas.

Israeli's PM condemned the ICC's decision as "antisemitic" at the time.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán this month said institution had been "degraded into a political tool", with his government announcing Hungary's withdrawal from the ICC hours after Netanyahu's arrival on 3 April.

However, the process is lengthy and takes up to a year to complete after a formal written notification has been submitted. This means that at the time of Netanyahu's visit to Budapest, Hungary was legally bound to arrest the Israeli PM under international law.

"The court has only been around for a little over 20 years, so we have few examples of cases where arrest warrants have been issued against heads of state," Mahmoud Abuwasel, Vice-President of the Hague Institute for International Justice, told Euronews.

"But in all of those examples there seems to be an issue with compliance and application of the statute", he said.

The ICC's judges ruled there is no legal basis for this when they dug into the case of Sudan's former President Omar al-Bashir.

Al-Bashir was in power from 1989 until 2019, and arrest warrants were issued against him in 2009 and 2010 for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.

Elizabeth Evenson, International Justice Program Director at Human Rights Watch, said that some states had asserted that al-Bashir couldn't be arrested due to his immunity as a serving head of state.

"ICC judges looked into this and ruled that despite the fact he was a head of state,