Allow me to start with a basic, but not unimportant question: ‘When will the United States become a State Party of the International Criminal Court?’ Well, it is exactly this question which was put to me in an interview by the Süddeutsche Zeitung – a German newspaper – published on 28 June 2012, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the entry into force of the Rome Statute. The answer that I gave then is essentially the same as my assumption today: regrettably there is no chance that the United States will join the Court in the foreseeable future. But I assume, no, I believe that the United States will be a State Party at the latest around the year 2040, almost forty years after the entry into force of the Rome Statute – it took the United States also almost forty years to ratify the Genocide Convention.

When this happens it seems quite likely to me that China will already be a member of the Court. I continue to be in regular contact with well-informed Chinese interlocutors. Already in 2003, when then President Kirsch and I were invited to Beijing, the Legal Adviser of the Chinese Foreign Ministry told us: ‘China, even as a non-State Party, wants to be regarded as a friend of the International Criminal Court. We will follow a wait-and-see policy for some time and observe whether the Court will behave as a purely judicial institution or whether it engages in politically motivated prosecutions. If the latter is not the case, the time for Chinese membership may come.’ More importantly, in the next decade there will be further profound changes in China, a new leadership replacing the old guard, a more democratic society – these developments may lead to Chinese membership in the International Criminal Court system sooner than expected.

I will address three sets of issues: (1) What about the efficiency and administrative culture in the International Criminal Court of the future? (2) What are some possible or likely developments with regard to judicial proceedings or with regard to the applicable criminal law? (3) What about the relationship between the International Criminal Court of the future and States Parties, States in general or the Security Council?