11
Mar
2026
Watch
Immunity of International Criminal Court officials and the activation of the EU Blocking Statute to strengthen EU strategic autonomy (debate)
Mr President, dear people of Europe, one of the most cynical things about the crimes of the National Socialists in the Holocaust was that it all, under German law, was perfectly legal. All the deportation, all the gas chambers, all the mass killings were not spontaneous acts of violence, but were based on laws, on regulation, on orders. So when the Nazi regime fell, international lawyers and the international community faced a severe challenge: how to prosecute people for something that was legal; how to prosecute those in power for something that is perfectly fine under their national law at the time. This is when international criminal law was founded – to keep people accountable, no matter how big their power to shape their own legal system. And this is to this day why the ICC is so important, and why we must draw a line in the sand now to protect it.