Italy and Denmark Lead Call for Easier Deportations of Foreign Criminals

Frustration is growing with the way human rights laws are hindering attempts by democratically elected governments to clamp down on illegal migration.

Leaders from nine European countries, led by Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, are pushing for the way the European Convention of Human Rights is interpreted to be revised, hoping to strike the “right balance” to make it easier to deport foreign criminals.

They say in a joint letter that the convention, which came into force more than seven decades ago, must be updated to “match the challenges that we face today.”

We have seen cases concerning the expulsion of criminal foreign nationals, where the interpretation of the Convention has resulted in the protection of the wrong people and posed too many limitations on the states’ ability to decide whom to expel from their territories.

There have been many such stories from Britain, which despite Brexit is more committed to the ECHR than ever, including the case of an Albanian criminal who was allowed to stay partly because his son will not eat foreign chicken nuggets.

Italy and Denmark’s letter has also been signed by leaders in Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland.

Czech PM Petr Fiala said on Thursday that “the safety of our people must come first.”

We need to have the ability to deport dangerous foreigners and protect ourselves from the abuse of migration by hostile regimes.

46 countries are signed up to the convention, including all 27 European Union member states.

It is likely that revising the convention would not go far enough, and that—as Britain’s populist Reform party claims—getting a grip of illegal migration is dependent on withdrawing from the ECHR altogether.