Photo: European Council, 2024
The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has gone “too far” in interpreting asylum laws on behalf of illegal migrants, which is hindering member states’ sovereignty and ability to protect their borders, Denmark and Italy argue in a letter that will soon be sent to the Strasbourg-based court.
According to the draft letter, seen by Euractiv, the Court has been stretching the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) beyond its original intent when it comes to asylum seekers, which limits the 46 member states’ ability to “make political decisions in our own democracies.”
The goal is to gather more allies who would sign the document and then lobby together for reinterpreting the Convention in a way that better reflects “the challenges of modern irregular migration,” because “what was once right might not be the answer of tomorrow.”
The full letter is not yet public, but is expected to be released in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, it’s open for co-signatories, who could also include Czechia, Finland, Poland, and the Netherlands—a group of countries that had been pushing for comprehensive asylum reforms at the EU level, including the establishment of off-shore migrant reception centers following the model of Italy’s Albania protocol.
Germany, France, Greece, Sweden, Hungary, and Slovakia are also likely to join, as the ECtHR has ruled against them in several separate asylum-related cases in recent years.
These cases ranged from refusing family reunification requests to ‘pushbacks’—returning illegal migrants to the other side of the borders without letting them apply for asylum, which is considered illegal by the Court, even if the migrants are caught right after entering the country.
In the case of Denmark, the ECtHR forced it to scrap its three-year compulsory waiting period for asylum seekers before they can request family reunification; while Italy has been repeatedly ruled against by the court for the alleged “mistreatment” of migrants and for returning them to Libya after picking them up in the Mediterranean Sea.
Also, many of these countries, such as Germany, Poland, and Sweden, are looking to significantly toughen their asylum laws in the near future, including by fast-tracking deportations and closing down the borders, which would make ‘pushbacks’ the de facto official policy.
This is also the direction of the EPP, the largest political group in all three EU institutions, which recently set out to advocate for the same asylum rules that got Hungary ruled against and fined by both the ECtHR and the EU Court of Justice.
The EU is also responding to the growing pressure by seemingly being on board with most of these changes, but if EU countries want to avoid legal and legislative deadlocks, they also need to make sure the ECtHR—established by the Council of Europe, not the EU—would also step aside.