European ministers to discuss sending rejected asylum seekers to third-country hubs

European ministers will this week discuss plans to send thousands of rejected asylum seekers to third-country hubs, the head of the continent’s human rights body has told the Guardian.

Alain Berset, the secretary general of the Council of Europe, said discussions about the removal of people who arrived in Europe by irregular routes would take place “at a multilateral level” at a meeting in Moldova on Friday.

Ministers are also expected to announce a political declaration that will recognise countries’ rights to control their borders after claims that human rights laws have impeded the removal of foreign criminals and unwanted asylum seekers.

There have been demands from several interior ministers, including the UK’s home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, for changes to the interpretation of the European convention on human rights (ECHR).

The planned moves will alarm human rights organisations in the UK. Asylum seekers successfully challenged Conservative government plans to remove them to the third-country hub of Rwanda using the ECHR.

Refugee organisations have said that undermining the convention risks weakening protection for society’s most vulnerable groups, including those fleeing war and persecution.

Speaking before the council’s conference in Chișinău, the Moldovan capital, Berset said: “The discussion about hubs was an important element. We all know that it has been discussed in different countries. It will be discussed at a multilateral level.

“It is progress, in the sense that we are able to address political elements [that were previously] discussed at a national level. So hubs will be discussed and we will need to see how it is possible to implement this.”

But Berset insisted that it would be “important” that migrants removed from “European soil” would still be protected by the ECHR.

“We are dealing with human beings on European soil. That means [they are] also protected by the European court, the European convention of human rights. That is decisive. Clearly the conditions in the countries are important,” he said.

The meeting, which the British foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, is expected to attend, is the first time that ministers have discussed setting up hubs at the council.

Keir Starmer’s government has attempted to set up “return hubs” after the rise of Reform UK in the polls. Mahmood told MPs in November that the Home Office was in “active negotiations” with several countries, but no deals have been confirmed.

The last government’s plans to send people arriving by small boats to Rwanda, which cost £715m by 2024, was cancelled after failing to send a single person to the central African country. The supreme court ruled that the policy was unlawful because Rwanda was not a safe country.

The European Union has voted to allow the possibility of return hubs with Denmark, Austria, Greece, Germany and the Netherlands involved in talks with possible destinations.

Discussions have reportedly revolved around 12 possible countries – Rwanda, Ghana, Senegal, Tunisia, Libya, Mauritania, Egypt, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Montenegro and Ethiopia.

Tensions around the ECHR intensified last year after a group of nine European countries, including Italy and Denmark, issued an open letter calling for greater national control over migration policies.

This week’s political declaration is expected to curb the way that asylum seekers can use articles 3 and 8 of the convention – which are the rights to live free from torture and the right to family life – to resist attempts of removal.

Berset said that discussions about the declaration, which will not be legally binding, will continue between the member countries. “The declaration is a milestone. It’s an important element, but it’s not over … it is an active work,” he said.

Reform, led by Nigel Farage, and the Conservatives have said they will withdraw from the convention if elected to government.

Asked whether this week’s declaration is necessary to keep the Council of Europe together and the ECHR at the centre of a legal framework, Berset said that the organisation has changed many times since its creation in 1949.

“It was transformed several times. We had some, periods of rupture – the so-called cold war and, the fall of the Berlin Wall. We are probably facing a new moment of rupture [in the] international order.”

“And clearly, the role of such an organisation is to be proactive and to be also reactive when something is happening. And that is exactly what is happening right now,” he said.

Supporters of return hubs have argued that that asylum seekers who have been refused permission to stay end up remaining anyway because of the impossibility of returning them to either their home country or a safe third state.

Statistics from Eurostat, the EU’s statistical office, show that over the seven years to 2023, between 450,000 and 500,000 third-country nationals were ordered to leave the EU each year, but fewer than half did so.