Fremuth – Scientific Director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Fundamental and Human Rights (LBI-GMR) and Professor of Public Law at the University of Vienna – notes a shift in the political landscape: “What is new is that we now see an entire phalanx of governments of different colours saying: ‘Dear Court, you must grant us more leeway in regulating migration.’”

While the ECHR does not contain a right to asylum, Fremuth stresses that it does protect fundamental guarantees such as the prohibition of torture and the right to private and family life. “In these areas, there is no room for manoeuvre of the kind states are now demanding.”

Looking at the broader trajectory of human rights, Fremuth observes: “In the 1990s, one might have believed that things were moving in a jointly positive direction – today, one must recognise that the centrifugal forces have increased dramatically.” This, he argues, affects “the very foundations of international human rights protection, namely the idea of universality.”

According to Fremuth, the “most severe distortions” are currently visible in the rights of sexual minorities, but setbacks are also evident in freedom of expression and assembly: “Forms of rule are once again becoming more authoritarian – linked to the decline of liberal democracies, for which the protection of human rights is part of their constitutional DNA.”

He concludes with a reminder that rights alone are never self-sustaining: “Fundamental and human rights depend on being lived – on being upheld by the conviction that the values they embody are shared and pursued by all of us. Otherwise, human rights remain lifeless, no matter how powerfully courts may adjudicate.”