Ahead of the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrant against Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Friedrich Merz, has described the potential arrest of Israel’s prime minister in Germany as “unthinkable”.
Merz, the CDU’s chancellor candidate, stated on Thursday in Berlin at an event hosted by the Körber-Stiftung that he would “do everything” to prevent the implementation of the ICC’s ruling.
The ICC accuses Netanyahu of crimes against humanity and war crimes. As a signatory to the ICC, Germany is obligated to detain the Israeli prime minister if he sets foot on its territory.
In the summer of 2023, when the ICC issued an arrest warrant against Vladimir Putin for the alleged kidnapping of children from occupied Ukrainian territories, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz stated that the warrant would be enforced if the Russian president entered German territory.
” The International Criminal Court is the right institution to investigate war crimes. And it is a fact that no one is above the law” Scholz said at the time.
When the ICC issued an arrest warrant against Netanyahu in May, the German government maintained its stance, with government spokesperson Steffen Hebestreit stating that Germany would adhere to the law, but did not comment on the potential enforcement of the warrant.
Merz, however, criticized the government’s stance, calling it a “scandal” that Germany intended to uphold its international commitments. In his view, the question of who commits war crimes is more important than the fact of the crimes themselves.
“The International Criminal Court was established to hold despots and authoritarian state leaders accountable, not to detain democratically elected government officials” Merz said.
He has maintained this stance, arguing on Thursday that the ICC’s Rome Statute is “difficult to apply to democratic states with democratically legitimized governments”. Merz also noted that the original intention of the Statute was to address “authoritarian states”.
Even if the ICC makes a legally correct decision, Merz believes it is “unthinkable” that an Israeli prime minister cannot visit Germany or other European Union countries without the risk of being arrested.