The centrist Danish government has announced that migrants will be immediately if convicted of a crime and sentenced to at least one year in prison.
In a press conference in Copenhagen on Friday, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen hinted that her government may be willing to directly take on the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) and its associated court in Strasbourg, which has actively been stymieing deportation efforts by multiple governments across the continent.
The Danish PM said that legislation will be introduced to ensure that any migrant convicted of a crime and sentenced to at least one year in prison will face automatic removal from the country. Furthermore, those criminal aliens who fail to comply with the government will be fitted with a GPS anklet.
To spearhead the removal efforts, a dedicated deportation czar will be appointed by the government, public broadcaster DR reported.
“Some experts might think that we are breaking the Convention with this. We see it the other way around,” Freiderickson said.
Minister for Immigration and Integration, Rasmus Stoklund, added: “If it does happen that the courts reject Denmark, then we must respect that… Then we must take stock of the specific judgment and see whether it changes anything in general for our legislation, or whether it is the specific case where something special must be done by a Danish court.”
Denmark, along with Giorgia Meloni’s government in Italy, has been at the forefront of the move to reform the ECHR. In December, 27 ECHR nations, including the United Kingdom, which remains bound by the Convention despite Brexit as it is technically a separate institution, signed a joint letter calling for the curtailment of excuses to prevent deportation of foreign criminals.
Under the ECHR, migrant criminals, and even some terrorists, can appeal their deportation over the prospect of facing “torture, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, irrespective of the victim’s conduct” in their homelands.
There have been reports that have alleged that migrants facing removal will fake being homosexual to claim that they may suffer discrimination in their native country.
Meanwhile, Article 8 of the ECHR, which guarantees a “right to private and family life”, is also often used in appeals against deportations. For example, in 2024 an Indian man was jailed for distributing child pornography, but was not removed from Britain after his lawyers successfully argued it would harm the pedophile’s children if separated from their father.
The scope of excuses to bar deportations has led figures such as Reform UK leader Nigel Farage to call for Britain to withdraw from the transnational court.
In addition to ramping up deportations, Denmark has said that it will look to re-open its embassy in Syria in a bid to force Damascus into finally accepting the return of its asylum seekers. Other EU nations such as Germany are also attempting to begin large-scale deportations to Syria now that the civil war is over.
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