On Wednesday, 10th December, Justice Minister Inese Lībiņa-Egnere participated in an informal meeting of Council of Europe (CoE) justice ministers in Strasbourg, where member states agreed to develop a joint declaration addressing the challenges migration poses to the application of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (the Convention). Twenty-seven CoE member states, including Latvia, expressed a shared commitment to strengthening national capacities to respond to migration-related threats while ensuring compliance with Convention guarantees and protecting the independence of the European Court of Human Rights.
Addressing the ministers, Justice Minister Lībiņa-Egnere highlighted that the situation at the Latvia-Belarus border illustrates the contemporary challenges of migration:
“Latvia has been confronting the instrumentalization of migration for over four years. Hostile regimes exploit migration flows to destabilize democracies and threaten our security. The scale, complexity, and strategic manipulation of migration that Latvia and Europe face today require a coordinated response. States must be able to protect their borders and citizens while upholding the values on which the Convention system is founded.”
The minister further stressed that the use of migration as a pressure tool on the EU’s external borders calls for broader and more transparent dialogue within the CoE framework:
“To develop solutions that are both effective and compliant with European human rights standards, we need discussions grounded in facts and a clear understanding of the Convention system. Only through honest, open dialogue and respect for the independence of the European Court of Human Rights can we maintain the balance between states’ duty to ensure security and our shared responsibility to protect human rights.”
During the meeting, Latvia, together with Denmark, Italy, Albania, the United Kingdom, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Estonia, Iceland, Ireland, Lithuania, Malta, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Finland, Hungary, Ukraine, and Sweden, expressed a unified position, noting that the risks posed by contemporary migration significantly exceed those at the time the Convention was drafted. The states emphasized that the Convention system must be capable of providing solutions in today’s context, where migration flows are used as instruments of pressure on democracies and national borders.
Member states agreed that the Convention system must balance the protection of individual rights with states’ responsibilities to ensure public safety. In this context, key principles such as subsidiarity, proportionality, states’ discretion, and mechanisms allowing courts to consider contemporary migration processes and related risks were highlighted.
Minister Lībiņa-Egnere supported CoE Secretary General Alain Berset’s proposal to prepare a political declaration on migration-related challenges to the Convention system, while emphasizing states’ obligations under the Convention. The declaration is planned for discussion in May 2026 in Chișinău, Moldova. She underscored that the declaration would be an important step toward solutions that strengthen states’ capacity to protect public safety while fully respecting the independence of the European Court of Human Rights and the principles of the Convention.