Hungary’s government has announced it will withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC), just before Prime Minister Viktor Orban was to receive his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu, the subject of an ICC arrest warrant, BBC reported.

The announcement comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrives in Budapest early Thursday morning for his first trip to Europe since 2023, defying the ICC's arrest warrant against him.

Last November, one day after the ICC issued the arrest warrant for Netanyahu for alleged war crimes in Gaza, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban extended an invitation to him, according to BBC.

Despite being an ICC member, Orban swore that the EU member would not execute the warrant, seeing the court's decision as "intervening in an ongoing conflict for political purposes."