THE HAGUE — An International Criminal Court judge sanctioned by the United States says the measures are meant to intimidate other European judges and is urging the European Union to push back.
Nicolas Guillou, one of the court’s 18 sitting judges, was placed under U.S. sanctions last year after issuing an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over alleged war crimes in Gaza.
On Tuesday he plans to meet Economy Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis and Financial Services Commissioner Maria Luís Albuquerque to discuss his case and what he says are potential remedies to a practice he describes as political interference in the court’s work.
“It has a chilling effect, and it is very much intended,” Guillou said in an exclusive interview in his corner office in the modern, glass-fronted complex that houses the court in The Hague.
The measures are part of a broader round of U.S. sanctions and travel bans targeting 11 ICC judges and prosecutors as well as five European nationals, including former European Commissioner Thierry Breton, over decisions they made as part of their official duties.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s use of sanctions to pressure national and international judges in other countries is unprecedented in both its nature and scale, said Guillou, a French citizen.
“This is the first time that judges have been sanctioned with a very clear message: that we must be corrected,” he said.
The sanctions against Guillou — which bar him from using payment systems such as Visa and Mastercard, as well as services including Amazon, Airbnb and Booking.com — amount to “a kind of civil death” and are being weaponized to undermine the foundations of European democracies, he said.
“The greatest risk to democracy is the internalization of fear,” Guillou said. “That public decision-makers, whether judges, parliamentarians, ministers, start censoring themselves and fail to apply the law as they should, or fail to make decisions as they would like to. And that is how judicial systems typically function in authoritarian countries.”
Guillou argued that his case reflects a wider use of sanctions to pressure judges beyond U.S. borders.
Last year, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on a Brazilian judge who had led investigations into former President Jair Bolsonaro — only to lift them a few months later after Brazilian lawmakers voted in favor of a controversial bill aimed at cutting Bolsonaro’s prison sentence.
Washington also reportedly considered imposing sanctions on the French judges who sentenced far-right leader Marine Le Pen to a five-year election ban last spring over embezzlement of EU funds — though the U.S. State Department has denied those reports.
Guillou is urging EU decision-makers to reduce Europe’s reliance on U.S.-based financial and technology infrastructure, arguing that sanctions are effective because so many essential services — from payment systems to online platforms — are controlled by American companies. He wants the bloc to develop independent European alternatives and adopt rules to curb U.S. dominance in critical services.
As a short-term remedy, Guillou said, the Commission could activate the Blocking Statute — a mechanism created in the 1990s to shield EU-based individuals and companies from the impact of sanctions imposed by non-EU countries — a move supported by France.
Over the medium term, he argued, the EU must ensure its citizens have access to a resilient payment infrastructure independent of U.S. operators, for example by accelerating work on the digital euro and better integrating existing national payment systems.
“This governance by fear needs to be absolutely rejected,” Guillou said. “Everyone needs to hold the line in their functions, but in order to do so, we need a form of solidarity.”
Digital pariah
Guillou, 50, was cycling through his native Brittany, near the bucolic village of La Forêt-Fouesnant, when he received a call last summer from the French foreign ministry to warn him that he had just been placed on the U.S. sanctions list.
The move wasn’t totally unexpected. Several of his colleagues had already been sanctioned for similar high-profile decisions in two earlier waves. But it was the first time judges from traditional U.S. allies and G7 members — Guillou and Kimberly Prost, a Canadian jurist — were targeted.
Guillou said he only gradually discovered the impact of the sanctions on his daily life, as his payments were declined or his requests for online services were rejected. The measures make it illegal for any American entity or individual to do business with him, effectively rendering him a digital pariah.
The magistrate, who twice served as a ministerial adviser under center-right President Nicolas Sarkozy, has had a career spanning two continents and multiple high-profile cases, including investigations into crimes committed during the war in Kosovo and work with the United Nations Special Tribunal for Lebanon.
He was posted in Washington, D.C., as a judicial attaché in the early 2010s and twice visited the U.S. military detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, along with American colleagues.
Bearded and with close-cropped graying hair Guillou said he has been able to adapt, using brick-and-mortar shops for purchases and phoning hotels when he wants to book a room.
He is speaking out over a wider concern for democracy, and for judges being able to apply the rule of law, he said.
“We as judges don’t choose the cases we get,” he added. “We apply the law to the facts.”
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