Quitting ECHR would group Britain with Russia, rights chief warns

LONDON — Leaving the European Convention on Human Rights would put the U.K. in a select group with the autocracies of Russia and Belarus, the head of the organization that oversees the treaty has warned.

Speaking to POLITICO on a visit to London, Alain Berset said there would be “consequences” for Britain if it left the regional human rights framework, which the U.K. founded with other countries in 1950.

The country’s two leading right-wing opposition parties, the Tories and Reform, want to leave the ECHR if they win the next general election — blaming it for difficulties in managing migration.

The secretary general of the Council of Europe said it was the U.K.’s choice whether it wanted to stay in the treaty or not.

“It is absolutely possible to leave the convention. Your decision,” he said. “But what would it mean? It would create a new group of European countries not members of the Council of Europe and not implementing the Convention: Russia, Belarus and the U.K. That would be the consequence.”

Support for remaining in the ECHR remains high in the U.K., with one YouGov poll conducted last October showing the British public want to stay in by 46 percent to 29 percent.

Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system, however, means a party could command a parliamentary majority with less than a third of the vote — making membership of the convention a live issue.

“We are not sovereign all the while we are part of the European convention on human rights, the Council of Europe and its associated court,” Reform leader Nigel Farage told parliament in October.

Productive process

The current Labour government, driven by its Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, wants to reform the way the convention is applied in relation to migration cases.

The U.K. has teamed up with other like-minded countries and asked Berset’s Council of Europe, which oversees the court, to look at the issue. The Council is expected to provide an update on its work at an upcoming summit in Chișinău, Moldova, on May 15.

Berset told POLITICO he would have something to present to member countries at the meeting, but that it was unlikely to be the end of the matter.

“I really think that we are in a productive process. It’s not over now, it’s ongoing. But my impression will be, we will have a declaration,” he said.

“It’s a process. It will land in Chișinău, but that’s not the end of the process. It is continuing. I am positive, yes, but it will continue. It’s not the end in May.”

The secretary general of the Council, which counts as its members every country on the European continent other than Russia and Belarus, said he had concerns about the way the reform process had been triggered.

“The whole thing started last year with nine countries addressing an open letter and creating this pressure on the Court,” he said.

“And I think this was the wrong start. In which country would we accept that? Someone creating really a brutal pressure on a court? We would say, no, you need to discuss this at the political level. My goal was to bring this back to Strasbourg and to address this at the political level.”

Not our role

Berset also warned that reforming the convention would not solve countries’ own internal debates on migration.

“Is this able to bring an answer to the concerns and challenges that the U.K. is facing in the migration discussions? I think yes, partly. When we see that there are concerns, they must be better addressed. But it will never be able to solve the internal discussion on migration. … But it’s not our role to have a direct impact on that,” he said.

Berset noted that most U.K. migration cases invoking human rights do not actually end up at the European Court in Strasbourg, but are usually examples of British domestic courts interpreting the treaty’s rights on their own.

British courts have been able to apply the convention themselves since the U.K. integrated it into its own domestic law with the 1998 Human Rights Act. The number of migration cases from the U.K. that make it to Strasbourg is actually “negligible,” he added.

Many of the rights invoked in migration cases are also not exclusive to the ECHR. The principle of non-refoulement, which means a person cannot be sent back into danger, is often a factor in challenging deportation cases. But as well as the ECHR, the idea is also enshrined in multiple U.K. domestic laws, as well as other international treaties like the U.N. refugee convention.

The secretary general said it was important not to lose sight of the fact that ultimately the convention and court gave citizens a right of redress beyond the influence of their own state.

“The role of the convention is to protect human rights. And yes, okay, maybe we have some situations where we need to discuss how it has been made: migration, let us discuss this,” he said.

“The point is when one U.K. citizen living here with his family sees his rights not being respected, and it is confirmed by the highest possible court in the country, there is still today, the possibility to go one step further and to try to obtain a correction.”