BRUSSELS — The 46 member states of the Council of Europe agreed Friday on a political declaration that reinterprets the European Convention on Human Rights as it applies to migration enforcement, a move that governments framed as necessary to manage irregular arrivals and that rights groups condemned as a threat to the continent’s foundational human rights architecture.
The Chisinau Declaration, adopted by the Council’s foreign ministers at a meeting in the Moldovan capital, affirms that states hold “the undeniable sovereign right to control the entry and residence of foreign nationals” and describes border protection as “both an obligation and a necessity” consistent with the convention. The Council of Europe oversees the European Court of Human Rights, the continent’s top court for enforcing the convention.
The non-binding declaration explicitly endorses the use of “third country ‘return hubs’ ” — deportation centers established in nations outside the European Union — and cooperation with transit countries, stating that nations “exposed to mass arrivals” can pursue such approaches to deter irregular migration.
Rights organizations responded with immediate alarm. Chiara Catelli, a spokesperson for the Brussels-based group PICUM (Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants), said the declaration could weaken both the court and the convention it enforces.
“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,” Catelli said.
Eve Geddie, director of Amnesty International’s European Institutions Office, said the declaration’s approach to rights based on immigration status “is an affront to the basic principle that human rights are universal.”
Italy last year became the first EU member state to send several dozen migrants who lacked legal permission to remain to a “return hub” in Albania — a country outside the EU that was neither the migrants’ home nation nor a transit point on their journeys. Rights campaigners have described such policies as inhumane and have drawn comparisons to the deportation practices of U.S. President Donald Trump.
The declaration follows years of tightening migration policy across the European Union, a trend that accelerated after right-wing parties gained power in several member states in 2024. Last year, leaders of nine EU countries — Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland — signed an open letter arguing that the rights convention prevented them from expelling foreign criminals and that the court’s interpretation had protected the “wrong people” while placing excessive limits on expulsion decisions.
European Union migration commissioner Magnus Brunner welcomed the declaration, calling it “an important step” toward a 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,” Brunner said.
Council of Europe Secretary General Alain Berset said after the signing that the Chisinau Declaration “will help to guide our own work as well as that of national authorities and domestic courts.”
The declaration is non-binding, meaning it does not alter the convention’s legal text or the court’s independent authority. But the political signal it sends — that a broad majority of Council of Europe member states wants migration enforcement prioritized in the convention’s application — is likely to shape the legal and policy debates over deportation practices for years to come.