On December 10, 2025, twenty-seven countries delivered a joint statement to the Council of Europe’s conference of ministers of justice, calling for an “updated interpretation” of the European Convention on Human Rights in light of what the signatories identify as “today’s challenges.” Although addressed to the Council of Europe, its audience includes the ECHR, other European governments, and the general public.
The statement presents itself as a defence of European values. Our analysis reveals something different: a carefully constructed rhetorical exercise that progressively reframes human rights protections as obstacles to national security, using migration as the vehicle for this transformation.
We employ two distinct analytical methods. Part One offers a detailed rhetorical analysis of the statement’s opening paragraphs, whose function is to introduce the argument and establish its legitimacy and validity. We demonstrate that the statement is the result of explicit political will rather than solid legal argument. Part Two uses Narrative Argumentation Analysis to trace a process of conceptual slippage whereby the defence of democracy is progressively rearticulated as the defence of national security and public order. The support for the ECHR that is reaffirmed initially becomes conditional towards the end of the document. This shift is organised through a binary logic opposing, on one hand, the protection of “our societies,” security, and democratic order, and on the other, the figure of the migrant or applicant constructed as a potential source of threat, abuse, or instrumentalisation.
Part One: Rhetorical Analysis
Premise 1: Establishing Authority and Morality
The statement opens with a long enumeration of signatory countries, lending the weight of consensus (enumeratio). It then reaffirms “strong belief” in the Council of Europe, European values, democracy, the rule of law, human rights, commitment to the Convention, and support for the independence of the Court.
This repetition of reaffirmations, rather than being simple declaration, is procatalepsis – the signatories anticipate that their statement will raise doubts and criticism about their commitment to these principles. It is a pre-emptive defence achieved by over-emphasising their “reaffirmation.”
Particularly significant is the invocation of “democratic security” (term used as an empty signifier, understood as a Hegemonic Social Representation) and the Reykjavik Declaration. In the Declaration, democratic security frames the defence of democracy in the context of external autocratic aggression – especially Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It is originally a construct linked to the protection of Council of Europe states against other states, not something to do with individual citizens.
This construct is nonetheless seamlessly invoked to challenge the ECHR on grounds of supposed criminal behaviour of immigrants, shifting focus from International Politics to “Internal Security”:
Our governments have a duty to guarantee our populations’ human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the right to live in peace, freedom and security, to preserve the values of our societies, and to effectively protect borders, prevent unlawful border crossings and counter migrant smuggling networks. Yet, the rights and freedoms of our populations are challenged by: people who take advantage of our hospitality by committing serious crime; trafficking in human beings and instrumentalisation of migrants.
Here we observe a semantic shift in the meaning assigned to democratic security—from strengthening democracy, human rights, and the rule of law as protection against conflict and instability, to the right to border control and migration stability. Throughout the statement, we see reference to the moral duties and obligations of each country to protect its citizens from the threat of foreign criminals abusing the system (ethos).
Premise 2: Manufacturing a Threat
The statement claims that “complex and disruptive challenges” facing European societies “were either unforeseen at the time the convention system and the Convention were drafted or have evolved significantly since then.”
The foreseeability of the three phenomena identified varies substantially when viewed against historical and legal context.
Human trafficking was unequivocally foreseeable in 1950, having been subject to extensive international regulation including early twentieth-century anti-trafficking treaties and the 1949 UN Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons, demonstrating that European governments were well aware of trafficking as a transnational violation requiring coordinated response.
Crime committed by foreign nationals was equally foreseeable. Cross-border criminality, extradition, and foreign offenders were core elements of European criminal law long before the Convention was drafted. The ECHR was adopted amid massive post-war displacement, reflecting states’ awareness of such issues.
The instrumentalisation of migrants, the deliberate use of migration flows as geopolitical coercion, was genuinely not foreseeable in 1950, as evidenced by the travaux préparatoires and the absence of any such concept in original Convention materials.
But here the argument collapses: we found no evidence that the ECHR is invoked to prevent prosecution of those responsible for instrumentalising migrants. ECHR case law and human rights mechanisms are overwhelmingly invoked to protect migrants from state abuses (pushbacks, denial of asylum, degrading treatment), not to shield states from accountability.
The “unforeseen challenges” argument is historically inaccurate for two of three phenomena and legally irrelevant for the third.
Premise 3: Conflation and Equivocation
The statement’s central rhetorical move is conflation:
In addressing under the Convention, the challenges in expulsion of foreign criminals, migration management and cooperation with third countries regarding asylum and return procedures, as well as removal procedures and instrumentalisation of migration, a right balance has to be found between the migrants’ individual rights and interests and the weighty public interests of defending freedom and security in our societies.
Very distinct issues—expulsion of convicted criminals, migration management, asylum procedures, and geopolitical instrumentalisation—are presented as part of the same problem. This effectively frames all migration-related matters within the criminal/security arena, grounding border issues as matters of national security.
The statement also employs equivocation: it starts with “foreign criminals,” slides to “migrants” when sketching the issue, and returns to “criminals” when formulating legal reforms—so that measures proposed for a narrow class become salient for all migration issues.
Part Two: Narrative Argumentation Analysis
Focusing on the individual and collective actors constructed in the statement, a clear distinction emerges between those positioned as “protectors” of the Council of Europe’s core principles and those constructed as adversaries.
The Defenders
The defenders include the 27 states, their governments, the Convention, the ECHR, “We,” “a group of Heads of State,” the Council of Europe, and the Secretary General. A discursive shift from “the States” to “We” and “Our governments” constructs a unified, authoritative collective subject, presenting a coherent front and pre-emptively legitimising the argument.
The Adversaries
The adversaries are constructed through cumulative listing: “unlawful crossings,” “migrant smuggling networks,” “people committing crime,” those who “instrumentalise migrants,” “irregular migrants,” “individual applicants with ulterior motives,” “foreign criminals,” and “hostile regimes.”
Through this aggregation, migration is framed within a continuum of criminality, abuse, and external threat. Migrants are ambiguously positioned as both victims (of instrumentalisation) and perpetrators (of crime or abuse), while also being associated with geopolitical hostility.
A more complex category appears with “people who take advantage of our hospitality” and the need to “expel foreigners convicted of serious crimes even though they have acquired ties to their host Country, e.g. if they have established a family life there.” These “foreigners” are not external but embedded within the state through family ties, indicating integration. Yet their status remains under-specified: can such ties be established without legal residence? What constitutes “serious crime,” and why is it not addressed within existing frameworks? This ambiguity enables their inclusion within the adversarial category despite their internal presence.
Responsibility is diffused through passive constructions: “attempts to distort and weaken the Convention system” and “instances where foreigners convicted of serious crime… cannot be expelled.” The agent responsible is not named. While the ECHR is implicitly positioned as a constraint, it is not explicitly identified—allowing the text to maintain apparent alignment while subtly shifting blame.
The Victims
The victims are constructed as a homogeneous collective: “our populations,” “our societies,” and “weighty public interests.” This collective is presented as silent yet in need of protection. Its right to safety is implicitly prioritised over individual rights, reinforcing a hierarchy in which collective interests outweigh those of individuals constructed as outsiders.
Conceptual Slippage: From Human Rights to National Security
The second part of the statement operates as a call to action through deontic modality—”should,” “must,” “need”—invoking obligation without specifying its source. Within this normative framework, a process of conceptual slippage becomes evident.
The initial reference to “democratic security” is progressively rearticulated:
- “States have a fundamental duty to safeguard national security”
- “the need to properly ensure national security and public safety”
- “balancing the protection of rights with safeguarding national security and protecting public safety and order, ascribing adequate weight to these values”
National security, public safety, and public order emerge as dominant values, while protection of rights is assigned lesser weight and increasingly constructed as an obstacle.
Human rights are repositioned as conditional rather than universal. The “weighty public interests” of national safety take precedence, and the Council of Europe is implicitly reframed as ensuring that rights do not hinder these objectives. This is made explicit in the proposal that “the scope of ‘inhuman and degrading treatment’ under Article 3, which is an absolute right, should be constrained”—signalling a significant reordering of the Convention’s normative hierarchy.
Recontextualising “Defensive Democracy”
The reference to “the concept of democracy capable of defending itself” is particularly revealing. This concept traces to Karl Loewenstein’s 1937 work, developed in response to the Weimar Republic’s collapse, addressing anti-democratic movements that gained power through democratic procedures.
In the present statement, however, this concept is recontextualised beyond its original focus on internal anti-democratic forces. It is mobilised in relation to migration, external threats, and legal constraints – illustrating conceptual slippage whereby a doctrine designed to protect democracy is repurposed to justify restrictions in domains not originally envisaged.
Conclusion
The statement does not simply call for legal adjustment. It signals a deeper normative shift.
Through the construction of a unified collective under threat, the aggregation of heterogeneous actors into a single adversarial category, and strategic use of deontic modality and passive formulations, the text redefines the relationship between human rights and state power.
What is presented as defence of “Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law” becomes, through conceptual slippage, a prioritisation of national security, public safety, and order, in which human rights appear as conditional, potentially excessive, and in need of constraint. The Convention system is not rejected but reinterpreted in ways that subordinate its universalist logic to state-centred imperatives, raising critical questions about the future orientation of European human rights governance.
By critically unpacking the rhetorical strategies utilised, we expose the underlying political motivations and highlight the potential erosion of human rights protections that may follow from this discourse. Such examination serves to enrich understanding of the complexities involved and the power dynamics at play in human rights discussions today.
