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The future of human rights is here. That is, at least according to member states of the Council of Europe who today, in Chișinǎu, Moldova, have agreed on a new Declaration to reform the European Convention of Human Rights. In the UK, the Government has already argued that the document will future-proof the Convention and thereby end speculations about UK withdrawal from it. If true, that is quite an achievement.

The reform process, which was started in September 2025 by the Danish and Italian governments, has resulted in a new “interpretative declaration” – a document seeking to instruct the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg to allow states more flexibility in sending foreign criminals back to their countries, even when conditions are harsh, and in reducing the protections of family life. The document also asks the Court to provide room to states for “innovative solutions” to migration, including transit hubs.

The document runs to many pages – a result of the fact that each country has brought its own set of demands. Denmark insisted on the inclusion of limits on the protection of family life in expulsion cases. The UK and Italy proposed a reinterpretation of the prohibition of torture, inhuman and degrading treatment to ensure that foreign criminals can easily be sent back to their countries. Other countries have been focused on the instrumentalization of migration, the mass arrivals of migrants and the resulting problems in processing migration cases within the limits of European human rights law.

A Pick-and-Mix Declaration

As a result, as documents go, the Chișinǎu Declaration is a mixed bag: it contains a pick-and-mix of instructions to the Court on how it should reduce the current protections, relativize absolute provisions, and give states more leeway to do what they wish in various contexts. The document is also marred by repetitions, inconsistencies and contradictions. The independence of the Court is underlined in multiple places, whilst states provide strict instructions as to how the Convention should be understood in other places. In this regard, the declaration is a window into how diplomacy works when there is no agreement – each state brought its own shopping list, but there was no consensus, no uniform European policy on migration.

So, does the document as a whole really reform the Convention? The declaration only takes effect when it is used by the European Court of Human Rights in its interpretation of the relevant clauses of the Convention. But the Court has to have the opportunity to do so. Given that only 1,5% of the Court’s case law relates to migration, and that all of these cases have to traverse through domestic court first, we are likely to wait for years before an opportunity arises for the Court to give life to the Declaration. States could have, for example, asked the Court for an advisory opinion on protections in the field of migration, but they chose not to do so. Perhaps this is then mostly a signalling exercise to the Court to back off.

The problem with the current approach is that it changes nothing at the domestic level, where most migration decisions are made. That is, it will change nothing unless states themselves take (preemptive) action. Denmark, for example, has legislated in detail on how to handle expulsion cases and also floated a new law that builds on the new, stricter rules stemming from the Declaration. This means that Denmark is seeking to give effect to the Declaration even before it is applied at international level, reaping the fruit even before the tree has blossomed. The UK may wish to train domestic judges on the adoption of the Declaration and its potential to be used to interpret the Convention domestically. But such expectations might be premature: judges can reject such efforts as interfering with their independent function or underline the mere fact that the Declaration is not binding and has no force in law. Without legislative action, what was agreed at international level is then unlikely to have any bite at home.

Even when a case gets to Strasbourg, the question is whether the Declaration will have the desired effect, particularly as concerns the envisaged softening of the prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment. Last week, the UN Committee Against Torture expressed concerns that efforts to reform the Convention were undermining the absolute nature of the prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment. It criticised attempts to introduce a balancing exercise into the process of assessing whether a case amounts to inhuman and degrading treatment. States, it urged, should refrain from such attempts.

The Strasbourg Court is undoubtedly aware of the political context in which it functions and is likely to heed some of the instructions of states, particularly as concerns limits on the protection of family life in expulsion cases, a path the Court has already started walking down. The instructions concerning the prohibition of torture, inhuman and degrading treatment are different. Here, the Declaration tells the Court how to do its job, and it does so in respect of an absolute right, whose interpretation the Court considers to lie at the core of its function. What the future holds is thus still to be determined.

Chișinău as a Political Signal

Getting too legal and technical might, however, miss the real point of the Chișinǎu Declaration. The Declaration might better be understood as a stepping stone to hardening domestic stances on migration and creating a common political position. A window into a political reality where many governments fear that being soft on migration might lead to their demise at the next election. And a window into a political reality where human rights are treated as limitations on government action rather than individuals’ fundamental rights worthy of protection.

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