BRUSSELS — Foreign ministers from 46 European and neighboring countries reached consensus Friday on a fresh interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights as it applies to migration matters, including the contentious practice of establishing deportation facilities in third nations.
The political agreement emerged following requests from certain member countries for tougher measures to combat unauthorized migration and streamline deportation processes.
Human rights organizations condemned the political agreement, arguing it might relax restrictions against torture and diminish Europe’s human rights safeguards for migrants.
“The declaration underlines that states have the undeniable sovereign right to control the entry and residence of foreign nationals, and that it is both an obligation and a necessity for states to protect their borders in compliance with the Convention,” the Council of Europe said in a statement after the non-binding declaration was adopted all of its 46 members’ foreign ministers Friday at a meeting in Chisinau, the Moldovan capital.
The organization stated that countries “exposed to mass arrivals” can pursue new approaches to deter irregular migration including “third country ‘return hubs’, and cooperation with countries of transit.”
The Council supervises the European Court of Human Rights, which serves as the continent’s highest authority for protecting human rights under the convention.
The agreement might undermine both the judicial body and the convention itself, according to Chiara Catelli, a spokesperson for the Brussels-based rights group PICUM.
“Governments are effectively seeking to pressure an independent Court into weakening long-established human rights protections in order to facilitate deportations, with the risk of deporting people where they could face torture, inhuman or degrading treatment, or where they would stop receiving life-saving medical care,” she said.
“A two-tier human rights system based on migration status is an affront to the basic principle that human rights are universal,” said Eve Geddie, director of Amnesty International’s European Institutions Office.
Italy transported several dozen migrants without legal permission to stay to a “return hub” in Albania last year, marking the first time a European Union member nation sent rejected migrants to a country outside the EU that was neither their homeland nor a nation they had passed through during their journey.
Human rights advocates have described such policies as cruel and draw comparisons to the deportation strategies of United States President Donald Trump.
The EU has progressively strengthened migration policies following right-wing parties gaining control in several countries during 2024.
Last year the leaders of nine European Union countries — Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland — signed an open letter claiming the rights convention prevented them from expelling foreign criminals.
These countries contended that the court’s interpretation of the convention in “cases concerning the expulsion of criminal foreign nationals” has protected the “wrong people” and imposed excessive restrictions on determining who can be expelled.
European Union migration commission Magnus Brunner hailed the declaration as “an important step” toward unified migration policy.
“It strengthens our approach to a fair and firm migration policy in Europe. Migration is a shared challenge that requires shared solutions,” he said.
Following the signing of the declaration, the Council’s Secretary General Alain Berset said the Chisinau Declaration “will help to guide our own work as well as that of national authorities and domestic courts.”
