By Lize Glas PhD, associate professor of European and international law at the Radboud University, member of the Advisory Council of CURE (Campaign to Uphold Rights in Europe) and Hanna Machinska, a prominent lawyer and formerly Deputy Commissioner for Human Rights in Poland
On 15 May 2026, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe adopted a ‘political declaration’ about migration and the European Convention on Human Rights in Chișinău. Rather than focusing on how to improve the Convention’s effectiveness, a number of states are instead pushing to narrow certain rights protections, particularly for migrants. It may prove to be a watershed moment – and not a positive one.
Although formally the declaration is not legally binding, both its content and the entire process by which it was created are deeply concerning. They threaten the independence of the European Court of Human Rights and the wider human rights system, while also breaking with the standards that have guided similar processes until now.
Overt and instrumentalised focus on migration
The declaration originates from a letter by 9 Council of Europe states (out of 46) in May 2025 and a subsequent statement of 27 states in December 2025. Both documents were highly critical of the Court’s stance on migration, which allegedly affords the states insufficient room to ‘decide on when to expel criminal foreign nationals.’ These statements call for the Court to rebalance the weight that it attaches to individual rights versus general legitimate aims.
The Convention, adopted in 1950, does not provide for a right to asylum, and the Court has no authority to decide whether asylum should be granted or refused. The role of the Court in migration cases is primarily limited to assessing whether the expulsion or deportation of migrants would violate fundamental rights enshrined in the Convention, in particular the prohibition of torture or inhuman or degrading treatment and the right to family life. The Court is far from insignificant, but its impact on shaping the migration policy of Council of Europe states is certainly overestimated and instrumentalised by some politicians – as can be seen in the Chișinău Declaration.
Case in point: statistics show quite clearly that migration cases have not been the main focus of the Court’s work. In fact, over the past 10 years, less than 2% of the complaints submitted to the Court (out of more than 440,000 applications) concerned migration. In only 6% of such complaints, the Court found a Convention violation.
In the current political climate, it is not surprising that political arguments are built on questionable factual grounds. However, we simply cannot ignore it when these arguments start to undermine the independence of the Court and respect for fundamental human rights.
Political declarations by the Committee of Ministers are nothing new. Since 2010, several of them have been adopted, mostly to deal with the Court’s too heavy caseload. One reason why the current declaration is noteworthy is that for the first time it is focused on a specific topic – the Court’s case law regarding migration. This fact alone risks putting pressure on the Court to reduce its standards in such cases. In turn, this approach would undermine the universality of human rights, even if this is not expressly stated in the declaration. Such an outcome would clearly be discriminatory.
Botched process
What is equally worrying is the rushed timeline the Chișinău Declaration has gone through, especially in comparison with previous similar documents. The process, imposed under pressure from a few states driving the effort, only allowed around 3 months to prepare the draft. It meant that there was little opportunity to consult with experts from civil society and academia and with the legal professional community. Furthermore, there was hardly any opportunity for national parliaments to discuss the draft or the related issues more broadly and to thus provide input. This weakened both the quality of the text and trust in the openness and transparency of the process behind it.
Despite the limited opportunities available, experts were nevertheless able to submit their comments. This likely contributed to a more moderate tone in the final version of the Chișinău Declaration, especially when compared with all previous iterations. Unfortunately, it still contains elements that raise concerns for the future of the European human rights system.
Unclear but likely negative consequences
The pressure placed on the Court by the entire process and, more specifically, by the executive branch has been undeniable. In this respect, the damage has already been done: short-term political interests have been weighed against the independence of the Court to freely decide in migration cases.
Depending on the framing one chooses, the Declaration can be presented either as an attack on the Court’s independence or as a reason to continue that attack. The Telegraph chose the former, presenting the Declaration as demanding ‘permission to run Rwanda-style offshore migrant camps,’ based on the Declaration’s statement that states ‘can pursue new approaches to address and potentially deter irregular migration.’ Prior to the adoption of the Declaration, a Dutch right-wing and populist politician opted for the second frame. He stated that the declaration does not go ‘far enough’ and is ‘not enough to restore the primacy of politics.’
And we still wait to see what impact, likely negative, the adoption of the declaration may have on the broader migration debate, one already dominated by populist arguments. As Alain Berset, Secretary General of the Council of Europe, said after the adoption of the document: ‘I’m quite sure that we will have further discussions on migration.’
It may not stop either with migration. As we have seen in the past, accepting limits on the rights of some, in this case migrants, risks opening the door to limiting human rights more broadly.
