Stripping of anti-migration policy, supported by nine EU states, rejected by the Secretary General of the Council of Europe
Alain Berset, Secretary General of the Council of Europe Photo: LafarGue Raphael / Abaca / Abaca Press / Profimedia
The Secretary General of the Council of Europe (COE), Alain Berset, rejected any weakening of the European Convention on Human Rights on Saturday, following the call of nine states, in front of Italy, to review its provisions regarding migration, informs AFP, taken by Agerpres.
“In the face of the complex challenges of our time, our role is not to weaken the Convention, but, on the contrary, to keep it strong and relevant,” said the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, who, with 46 member countries, is the guard dog of democracy and human rights on the old continent.
In an open letter published on Friday by the Bureau of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, nine European countries, including Italy, Denmark and Poland, they considered to be “necessary to start a discussion about how international conventions are responsible for the challenges we face today.”
The text concerns the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), emanation of the Council of Europe – both based in Strasbourg, Eastern France – and which has the responsibility to ensure the compliance with the same name in the 46 signatory countries.
The nine states say that they want to be noticed “if, in some cases, the Court has expanded the range of the convention too much compared to the initial intentions.”
In response, Berset wrote that “the debate is healthy, but we should not politicize the yard.” “Maintaining the independence and impartiality of the Court is fundamental,” the former Swiss socialist president continued. “In a rule of law, justice should not be subject to political pressure (…) The court should not be used as a weapon, neither against governments, nor by them,” he concluded.
The letter on Friday came after a meeting in Rome between Meloni and Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, both in very firm positions in terms of immigration, and was also signed by leaders in Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and the Czech Republic.
“We consider that the interpretation of the Court has limited, in some cases, our ability to make political decisions in our own democracies,” the signatories said.
The radical right -wing government of Giorgia Meloni has committed to suppress the clandestine immigration, but its plan to set up detention centers in Albania has encountered a series of legal obstacles. The Italian judges refused to validate the detention in Albania of the migrants detained by the Italian authorities, sending the question of the legality of this measure to the European Court of Justice, based in Luxembourg, who has not yet made a final decision.
The French judge Mattias Guyomar, who on Friday, May 30 will take over the position of president of the ECHR, promised at his choice, at the end of April, that he will defend the institution against “attacks on the rule of law” and “challenge the values on which the European Convention on Human Rights has been based”.
