Speaking to POLITICO, 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.
Jon Stone
“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.
