The whole Court¶
On 21 September 2026, Reuters and The Wall Street Journal reported that the US administration was preparing sanctions against the International Criminal Court as an institution rather than against individual judges and prosecutors, after sanctioning more than a dozen of its officials since February 2025. The last individual round, on 18 August, took in the Court’s President, Tomoko Akane, and a senior trial lawyer, Abdoulaye Seye; after it the Court counted nine of its eighteen judges, both deputy prosecutors, the former Prosecutor and one staff member under sanctions, and OFAC’s wind-down licence for the two ran out on 17 September. The measures had not yet been announced. Sources around the Dutch cabinet confirmed the reports to de Volkskrant the same morning, expecting the announcement that week, possibly during the president’s speech to the General Assembly. Half of the Court’s judges were already on the sanctions list. Reuters, citing two sources familiar with the matter, reported that entity-wide sanctions would bar US citizens and companies from providing funds, goods or services to the Court without a licence, after a grace period of six to seven months. The Journal reported that the decision could be finalised during the United Nations General Assembly or shortly afterwards.
The instrument has moved one level up from Karim Khan’s mailbox, and the measures are still a report. The earlier case followed a designation of one person into the Court’s relationship with a technology provider. This one would designate the institution itself, making every bank, technology company, insurer, supplier and employee around it ask what it could lose.
Still a report¶
The reported measures would prohibit most transactions between US persons and the ICC without a Treasury licence, after a grace period of six to seven months. Reuters lists the operations that could be affected: the purchase of IT services and insurance, the hiring of investigators, and everyday financial transactions such as paying dozens of American employees. These are the disruptions the Court’s own leadership had warned of.
The reporting also describes consequences for organisations outside the US. Banks and financial institutions are the most exposed because they rely on access to the American financial system.
Autistici/Inventati had a much shorter interval between designation and the end of its services. Here, the reported six to seven months would give the Court and its providers time to identify dependencies, replace some of them and establish alternative payment and technology arrangements.
That does not make the dependency disappear. It changes how long there is to move it.
The Netherlands is the Court’s host state and has been preparing for the consequences. De Volkskrant reported the same day that the Netherlands was working out how to keep paying the Court’s staff and protected witnesses, and that the member states’ annual assembly, due in New York in December, might have to move to The Hague. Dutch officials had been told the sanctions were imminent and were looking at ways to help the Court keep operating, including paying staff, protecting witnesses and maintaining the detention facility.
Dutch and Court officials were hoping for a six-month grace period so that the institution could move off American companies first. The Court had already left Microsoft. Its deputy prosecutor, Nazhat Shameem Khan, told the Financial Times on 25 September that over the past year the Court had replaced Microsoft’s office software with openDesk, found workarounds for health insurance and banking, and paid staff months in advance, “so that the court is buffered from the impacts of any potential sanctions in the future”. The EU Blocking Statute can be used to protect European court staff by forbidding European companies to comply with the US measures. Whether it would shield the Court itself, an international body and not a European one, is unclear.
The Netherlands has not invoked the statute. In April 2026 the Tweede Kamer adopted a motion asking the government to press in the EU for its activation. The government’s answer tied that step to a judgement: if new US sanctions were expected to seriously obstruct the Court’s functioning, the cabinet would press for activation. After the sanctions on individual officeholders, it judged that the Court had continued most of its work and that activation was not needed.
De Volkskrant reported that the Netherlands had so far held back from pressing for the statute for fear of escalating the conflict with the United States.
The graph therefore looks like this while the outcome remains unknown:
reported US sanctions
│
▼
ICC as target
│
┌───────────────┼────────────────┐
│ │ │
banking technology other
│ │ suppliers
▼ ▼ │
payment IT service │
exposure exposure │
│ │ │
└───────────────┴────────────────┘
│
▼
Dutch / EU response
│
┌─────┴─────┐
│ │
support escalation
│ │
▼ ▼
continuity new exposure
The host state is itself now an intermediary.
It has to calculate the cost of supporting the Court, just as a bank or technology company has to calculate the cost of providing a service to it. The EU has to calculate the consequences of requiring European companies to continue relationships that may cost them fines or their dollar clearing. Banks and suppliers then ask whether the Court is worth the fine.
The designation does not pass down one chain. It lands on several edges of the graph at once.
The host does the sum too¶
With the Court as a whole, the target moves one level up the dependency graph.
With Karim Khan, the question was whether a designation of one person could cost the institution its mail.
Here the institution itself is the named target.
That changes the scale but not the mechanism.
The reported sanctions would not need to shut down the Court directly. They could instead make particular relationships with the Court expensive for the organisations that maintain them. Those organisations then become the next decision points.
The Netherlands illustrates the same mechanism at state level.
It is both host and intermediary. Supporting the Court is part of its relationship with the institution, but responding to US pressure can itself escalate the conflict with the United States. The EU Blocking Statute is designed to counter certain effects of extraterritorial foreign sanctions, but invoking it is not a switch. It sets every organisation involved a second sum, legal and political. The Dutch government has already tied its use to a judgement about whether the Court can still function, and after the sanctions on individual officeholders judged that it could.
The form is recursive:
US pressure
│
▼
ICC
│
├── bank ──────────► bank's exposure
│
├── technology ────► provider's exposure
│
├── insurer ───────► insurer's exposure
│
├── supplier ──────► supplier's exposure
│
└── host state ────► Dutch exposure
│
▼
EU response
│
▼
new provider exposure
The dependency test follows that last edge.
A protective measure can itself introduce a new dependency. A European provider may be willing to continue serving the Court, but the provider has its own banks, insurers, software suppliers, shareholders, regulators and jurisdictions. The question then moves one level down again.
Whether the sanctions are announced, what their final scope is, which exemptions and licences they contain, whether the Netherlands or the EU activates a blocking measure, and whether any bank or supplier withdraws are all future observations. The initial report does not establish those outcomes. Reuters’ report rests on two sources familiar with the matter, and the reporting on 21 September describes the measures as forthcoming. On 22 September Trump used his General Assembly speech to call on states to leave the Court, “evil” and “a rogue institution” in his words; only Naoero followed that week. The Dutch prime minister, Rob Jetten, told the Assembly on 24 September that the Court is under attack, without naming the United States, and on 25 September Reuters still described the entity-wide measures as being prepared.
Those observations are the experiment.
Last reviewed: 2026-09-25.