Council of Europe chief warns UK leaving ECHR would align it with Russia and Belarus

Council of Europe Secretary General Alain Berset warned that leaving the European Convention on Human Rights would place the UK in a group with Russia and Belarus, the only other European countries not party to the treaty. Speaking to POLITICO during a visit to London, Berset said leaving would have “consequences” but that it was the UK’s choice. “It is absolutely possible to leave the convention. Your decision,” he said. “But what would it mean? It would create a new group of European countries not members of the Council of Europe and not implementing the Convention: Russia, Belarus and the U.K. That would be the consequence.”

The UK founded the European Convention on Human Rights in 1950. The warning comes as the opposition Conservatives and Reform UK have pledged to quit the ECHR if they win the next general election, citing migration concerns. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage told parliament in October: “We are not sovereign all the while we are part of the European convention on human rights, the Council of Europe and its associated court.”

A YouGov poll from October 2025 showed 46% of Britons support staying in the ECHR, 29% want to leave. Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system means a party could command a parliamentary majority with less than a third of the vote, making membership a live issue.

The current Labour government, led by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, wants to reform the ECHR’s application in migration cases. The UK has teamed up with other like-minded countries and asked Berset’s Council of Europe to examine the issue. The Council is expected to provide an update at a summit in Chișinău, Moldova, on May 15. Berset told POLITICO he would have something to present to member countries at the meeting but that it was unlikely to be the end of the matter. “I really think that we are in a productive process. It’s not over now, it’s ongoing. But my impression will be, we will have a declaration,” he said.

Berset said the reform process started with nine countries addressing an open letter, which he called “the wrong start.” “The whole thing started last year with nine countries addressing an open letter and creating this pressure on the Court,” he said. “And I think this was the wrong start. In which country would we accept that? Someone creating really a brutal pressure on a court? We would say, no, you need to discuss this at the political level. My goal was to bring this back to Strasbourg and to address this at the political level.”

Berset noted that most UK migration cases invoking human rights are handled by British domestic courts, not the European Court in Strasbourg. British courts have been able to apply the convention themselves since the UK integrated it into its own domestic law with the 1998 Human Rights Act. The number of UK migration cases reaching Strasbourg is “negligible,” Berset said. Many rights invoked in migration cases are not exclusive to the ECHR. The principle of non-refoulement is enshrined in UK domestic law and the UN refugee convention, not only the ECHR.

Berset also warned that reforming the convention would not solve countries’ own internal debates on migration. “Is this able to bring an answer to the concerns and challenges that the U.K. is facing in the migration discussions? I think yes, partly. When we see that there are concerns, they must be better addressed. But it will never be able to solve the internal discussion on migration. … But it’s not our role to have a direct impact on that,” he said.