Today, 17 July, marks the anniversary of the adoption in 1998 of the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the only permanent international criminal jurisdiction with a universal vocation.
The Rome Statute aims to bring justice to the victims of the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole by ensuring the effective prosecution of their perpetrators.
On this occasion, EU High Representative Josep Borrell on behalf of the European Union said the EU is resolved to defend the integrity of the Rome Statute and the universality and independence of the Court.
“The European Union stands firm against any attempts to undermine the Rome Statute framework, and the broader international system of criminal justice, upon which rest the last hopes of many victims around the world,” Borrell’s statement says.
Since 2000, the European Union has supported the ICC through direct funding for outreach activities, global civil society campaigns and projects to promote the ratification of the Rome Statute, as well as through programmes aimed at improving national justice systems through training and capacity building.
Since the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the European Union has so far supported the ICC with over €10 million. The court singled out acts of illegal forced deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children as war crimes as grounds for issuing the first arrest warrants since the start of the Russian invasion.
Six EU Member States and Ukraine are members of the Joint Investigation Team, to which the International Criminal Court (ICC) and Europol are participants.
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