Status: 06/18/2022 4:35 p.m
British Home Secretary Patel has accused the ECtHR of having prevented the first British deportation flight to Rwanda for political reasons. Your government wants to stick to the procedure.
Britain’s Home Secretary Priti Patel has sharply criticized the intervention of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) on deportation flights to Rwanda planned by London. “The opaque workings of this court are absolutely scandalous. That needs to be questioned,” Patel told the Daily Telegraph. She assumes that the decision was “politically motivated”.
British Home Secretary Patel is considered a hardliner on asylum issues.
Image: AP
This week, the British government wanted to bring asylum seekers who had entered Britain illegally to Rwanda for the first time. To this end, it had concluded an agreement with the government in Kigali. People in the East African country are to be housed for money to deter other people from trying to cross the English Channel to Great Britain.
Transport to Africa with no return
Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government wants to discourage people from illegally entering the English Channel in small boats by denying them access to an asylum procedure in the UK. Instead, the migrants are to be sent to Rwanda and apply for asylum there. A return is not planned.
A first flight to the African country was prevented by the EMGR with a last-minute injunction. Patel suggested London could turn its back on the European Convention on Human Rights. Great Britain would thus be the only European country alongside Russia and Belarus to bid farewell to the convention.
Patel now said in the newspaper interview that the government had not been informed of the identity of the responsible ECtHR judges. In addition, she was only able to see the full decision of the court later.
Johnson wants to stick to the plan
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is under political pressure from a record number of refugees arriving. During the election campaign, he had announced a much stricter immigration policy after Brexit. His government is now considering revising Britain’s human rights law to make deportations easier. This law is based on the European Convention on Human Rights.
Johnson confirmed that he wanted to stick to the Rwanda policy. He had previously accused lawyers working for migrants of “aiding” gangs of people smugglers. As confirmed by the Ministry of the Interior, illegal immigrants are also to be fitted with electronic ankle bracelets to prevent them from going underground.
What is the European Court of Human Rights?
The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) based in Strasbourg is not an organ of the European Union. The Council of Europe is behind the ECtHR. There are also states that are not members of the EU – for example Turkey or the United Kingdom. For this reason, the ECtHR can also make binding decisions for these countries. In terms of content, the Strasbourg judges examine whether the respective state measures are compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
Usually, the way to the ECtHR is only open when the legal channels at the national level have been exhausted, i.e. no more legal remedies are possible in the country. In particularly urgent cases, Strasbourg can also make provisional decisions in an urgent procedure. In these cases, the content is mostly about the threat of deportation. In the past, 100 to 200 such urgent applications per year were successful.
By Christoph Kehlbach and Maximilian Bauer, ARD legal department