A group of European governments has submitted a joint political statement to the Council of Europe urging judges to interpret Europe’s main human rights treaty more narrowly. Framed as a push to speed up removals, the move prioritises deportation over protection. Further, it shifts asylum responsibilities, weakening the safeguards essential to escape exploitation, access justice, and recover. By recasting migrants as security threats rather than rights-holders, governments risk driving people underground, where criminalization and exclusion make exploitation harder to detect. From an anti-trafficking perspective, diluting universal human rights protections undermines prevention, protection, and non-punishment principles. As such, creating precisely the conditions in which modern slavery thrives. 

“Political gesticulation” can lead to real-life consequences 

In a coordinated move, 27 European governments are pushing for tougher interpretations of rights protected under the European Convention on Human Rights. Rights that are most often raised in migration and deportation cases. The bloc claims the move is necessary for public safety, national security and border control. But experts warn the consequences could be far more dangerous.

Speaking to PassBlue, Vincent Chetail, a Geneva-based migration law scholar stated: 

If we are starting by degrading human rights in deportation cases . . . it is extremely dangerous for our democracies, for the rights of everyone. 

Chetail warns that once governments treat human rights as conditional for politically unpopular groups, the erosion does not stop there. If protections can be weakened for migrants, other safeguards quickly become expendable. Because the Convention applies universally within a state’s jurisdiction, narrowing rights in migration cases ultimately weakens protections for everyone.

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