An assistant professor of international law at Leiden University has proposed that States Parties to the Rome Statute respond to US sanctions against the International Criminal Court not with countermeasures, but with what he calls "positive retorsion" — a strategy of overcompensating sanctioned ICC personnel and expanding the Court's budget so dramatically that the sanctions become a net benefit for those targeted.

Writing in a commentary published 25 September, Jens Iverson argues that the Assembly of States Parties, at its upcoming December 2025 meeting, should "massively increase the ICC budget" and treat the current sanctions regime as an emergency. His analysis follows his November 2025 piece on this site examining the EU's power and responsibility to protect the ICC, which discussed the Anti-Coercion Instrument (dubbed "the Big Bazooka"), the Extraterritoriality (Blocking) Statute, and the European Commission-supported Digital Commons European Digital Infrastructure Consortium (EDIC).

The core proposal

Iverson frames the Trump Administration's sanctions as an attempt to take ICC officials — and now the ICC itself — hostage. The Administration's message, he writes, is effectively: "keep your authority away from us and from our allies and perhaps we will not make it expensive for you to continue to serve as judges, as prosecutors, and as the collective expression of the states parties to make international criminal law a reality."

His answer is not a counterthreat. "I propose that the best way to counter this threat is not with a counterthreat, but to create a response that makes the total effect of the sanctions a net positive for those under sanction," he writes. There is, he argues, a compensation figure for every ICC employee that would offset the burdens of sanctioned status — disrupted banking, interfered loans and insurance, exclusion from the United States for staff and their families.

The arithmetic, as Iverson presents it, makes the approach feasible. The ICC's annual budget is under €200 million. The Dutch military budget runs to roughly €27 billion; reallocating one percent of it would more than double the Court's funding. The EU's defence budget stands at €381 billion — the EU spends the equivalent of a doubled ICC budget every five hours on defence. The combined GDP of all States Parties exceeds 160 percent of the EU's.

Retorsion versus countermeasures

Iverson draws a doctrinal distinction. Countermeasures, a term of art in public international law, are measures that would ordinarily be illegal but escape wrongfulness because they are proportional and responsive to another state's illegal conduct. Most substantive diplomatic responses, by contrast, are retorsions — legal but unwanted acts. Increasing funding, he argues, is "positive retorsion": unlike "negative retorsion" such as trade sanctions or diplomatic expulsions, its point "is not so much to hurt but to overwhelm the negative action taken by the Trump Administration with so much reward that the threat is counterproductive."

Five prescriptions

Iverson sets out five concrete steps.

First, the "bare minimum" is to make ICC employees whole. The Assembly of States Parties could pre-pay salaries for the next three years — there is, he cautions, no guarantee a new US president would lift the sanctions — and provide "hazard pay" for the legal hazards facing employees and their families.

Second, if private entities refuse services to the ICC and its staff, states should provide those services themselves. "There is nothing that private entities can do that is impossible for states to do," he writes, noting that Washington will find punishing sovereign states acting in concert harder than punishing companies.

Third, States Parties should expect further attacks. He cites a Wall Street Journal editorial board attack on the International Court of Justice resting on, in his view, the same unfounded grounds invoked by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The weak response of targeted states so far, he argues, has invited continued abuse of the US sanctions power.

Fourth, the EU should deploy its existing tools, and non-EU states should use or craft equivalents. He recalls that in August 2025 the European Parliament called on all EU institutions and member states to use all necessary measures to support the Court, including activating the Blocking Statute. The Anti-Coercion Instrument — designed to deter "economic coercion," arguably including threats to refuse authorization needed to use the US financial system — has never been used. The Blocking Statute can nullify within the EU the effect of foreign court rulings based on extraterritorial laws and allows EU operators to recover damages in court.

Fifth, States Parties should treat the threat to the ICC as a national security matter, not an irritation. Effective enforcement of international criminal law, Iverson writes, is the only alternative to growing instability, and refusing to stand up to bullies is why "bullies are currently on a rampage." His bottom line: "International law is a need to have, not a nice to have. States Parties must treat threats to the ICC as the threat to security and sovereignty as it is. And budget accordingly."

Practical consequence

For practitioners and policymakers, the piece reframes the policy debate: rather than litigating whether and how to deploy coercive instruments, States Parties could act lawfully and unilaterally through budget decisions at the December Assembly session. Defending the ICC, Iverson concludes, "is a winnable issue, but it requires both clarity of purpose and creativity" — and perhaps, he adds, there is still time before 2026 ends, "if there is enough will, foresight, and creativity."