Or. Eng.

                February 2026

The Court’s case-law on immigration matters

1.  This document has been prepared by the Court as a short overview of the current state of its case-law on immigration matters. It outlines key principles and presents relevant statistical data[1]. The document is not intended to be exhaustive and is not binding on the Court in the exercise of its judicial functions.

2.  It constitutes the Court’s contribution – on an objective and neutral basis and with full respect for its judicial independence – to the work of the Steering Committee for Human Rights (CDDH), whose task is to prepare draft elements for a political declaration, as a follow-up to the decisions adopted by the Ministers’ Deputies at the Informal Ministerial Conference held in Strasbourg on 10 December 2025.

1.  Jurisdiction

3.  Under Article 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights the Contracting States have undertaken to secure to “everyone” within their jurisdiction the rights and freedoms listed in the Convention and its additional Protocols. The term “everyone” covers non-nationals in a given country, including migrants, asylum-seekers and refugees. Therefore, any individuals who consider that their human rights have been infringed by actions attributable to a State party are entitled to make a complaint under the Convention, including where those actions are related to immigration.

4.  The Court may examine a complaint only where the applicant fell within the jurisdiction of the respondent State, was directly affected by a measure attributable to that State[2], and where the complaints submitted to it have first been raised before domestic courts.

5.  The concept of jurisdiction under Article 1 of the Convention is a threshold criterion: individuals must fall within the jurisdiction of a Contracting State in order to be able to rely on their Convention rights. It is normally limited to a given State’s territory[3], and the Court will thus find applications inadmissible if they concern migrants who were not on the respondent State’s territory at the material time, save in exceptional circumstances. For example, the Court declared inadmissible a case concerning an unsuccessful request for an entry visa made from outside the territory of the State in question[4]. In another recent inadmissibility decision concerning efforts to rescue migrants in distress at sea, the Court concluded that the respondent State’s jurisdiction was not engaged by the mere fact that its Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre had informed the competent authority of another State, following which that other State had carried out a rescue operation according to its obligations under international maritime law[5]. The Court distinguished that case from those in which a State’s jurisdiction could be engaged in respect of events which took place on the high seas where the applicants were under the full and exclusive control, de jure or at least de facto, of agents of the respondent State[6].

2.  The Court’s approach and review

6.  As the Court has emphasised many times, Contracting States have the right to control the entry, residence and removal of aliens, in accordance with established rules and principles of international law, and subject to their treaty obligations, including those arising from the Convention[7].

7.  The right of asylum is not provided for in either the European Convention on Human Rights or any of its Protocols and the Court does not itself examine an actual asylum application or verify how a State has honoured its obligations under the 1951 Refugee Convention[8]. Even though the Court does not have the authority to ensure compliance with other international treaties or with international obligations deriving from sources other than its own Convention[9], it may take them into account when interpreting the Convention in order to ensure a harmonious interpretation of international law[10].

8.  Likewise, the Court is not competent to examine alleged violations of EU rules or to apply such rules unless – and then only in so far as – the rights and freedoms protected by the Convention have thereby been infringed[11]. It operates, however, under a presumption that the European Union guarantees the protection of fundamental rights at a level equivalent to that of the Convention[12].

9.  Each year, the Court receives a large number of applications which it examines on a case-by-case basis. It rejects the vast majority of those applications, as they concern clearly inadmissible complaints[13]. Admissible applications generally result in a judgment, but a violation will not be found in all judgments delivered by the Court. It may find a violation of the Convention when a State, through its actions or omissions, has infringed the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Convention in respect of individuals within its jurisdiction.

10.  A complaint that a State has allegedly not respected individuals’ rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Convention may relate to various matters in the field of immigration and to different Convention provisions.

3.  Subsidiarity and shared responsibility

11.  The Convention system is characterised by the principles of subsidiarity and shared responsibility between the States Parties and the Court. Contracting States have the primary responsibility of securing the rights and freedoms defined in the Convention, which means that national authorities and courts must interpret and apply domestic law in a manner that gives full effect to the Convention[14]. The machinery of complaint to the Court is subsidiary to national systems safeguarding human rights, as articulated in Article 13 – which requires the availability at national level of an effective remedy to enforce the substance of the Convention rights – and in Article 35 § 1 of the Convention, which provides that the Court can only deal with the matter after all domestic remedies have been exhausted[15].

12.  To fulfil their obligation to secure the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Convention, domestic courts need to thoroughly examine complaints about alleged violations of its provisions[16]. As the national authorities are best placed to assess the facts and, in particular, the credibility of individuals appearing before them, it is not the Court’s task to substitute its own assessment of the facts for that of the domestic courts where proceedings have taken place before them[17]. At the same time, the fact that domestic proceedings have taken place does not lead to a renunciation of all supervision by the Court of the result obtained through the use of domestic remedies[18].

4.  Scope of protection of rights

13.  Individuals have complained to the Court about situations relating to their immigration status, including about extradition or expulsion, summary returns at borders, immigration detention, reception conditions of asylum-seekers, family reunification, and an alleged lack of an effective remedy in those respects. The various factual circumstances of applicants may concern different rights under the Convention. The Convention provisions which are most often cited by applicants in such cases are: Article 3 (prohibition of torture and inhuman and degrading treatment), Article 5 (right to liberty and security), Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life), Article 13 (right to an effective remedy), and Article 4 of Protocol No. 4 (prohibition of collective expulsion).

14.  Article 6 of the Convention, which guarantees the right to a fair and public hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial tribunal, does not apply to proceedings related to the entry, stay or removal of aliens, including asylum matters[19]. This is because such proceedings do not involve the “determination of civil rights and obligations” or a “criminal charge”, which are the necessary conditions for Article 6 to apply[20].

15.  The scope of the protection of the rights under the Convention sets the framework for the Court’s examination.

16.  A distinction is to be made, notably, between the right not to be subjected to torture or inhuman or degrading treatment guaranteed by Article 3 of the Convention, which is absolute, and the right to respect for private and family life protected by Article 8 of the Convention, which is a qualified right in that it can be lawfully restricted by the States under certain conditions.

Article 3

17.  As the right not to be subjected to torture or inhuman or degrading treatment guaranteed by Article 3 is absolute, it is not possible for a State to justify any infringement of that right[21]. Notwithstanding the absolute character of Article 3, the Court’s practice shows that situations of crisis or extreme difficulty confronting national authorities are to be considered when it examines whether a State has fulfilled its obligations under this provision[22]. This was the case, for example, when it took into account the challenges facing a respondent State, in the context of a major migration crisis, in its assessment of complaints related to the conditions in which migrants had been held[23].

18.  Cases under Article 3 may arise where migrants allege that they will face a real risk of torture or inhuman or degrading treatment and punishment if they are removed to another State because they would face such treatment there[24]. If migrants are able to demonstrate that they will indeed face ill-treatment, Article 3 prohibits their removal to that State[25]. Even where the existence of a risk of ill-treatment has been shown, the State wishing to remove or extradite the individual may do so after obtaining assurances from the destination State that there will be no such risk to his or her life or physical integrity[26]. The Court considered it sufficient, for example, in the context of transfers of asylum-seekers under the Dublin Regulation, for circular letters to be issued by the receiving State stating that vulnerable asylum-seekers would be placed in adequate reception facilities[27].

19.  If the domestic authorities, in particular the courts, have carried out a rigorous assessment of whether the individual would face a real risk of ill-treatment in the destination country, the Court is unlikely to find that the removal would breach Article 3, even if the security conditions in that country are difficult. Cases in which the Court has found that a removal would breach Article 3 are typically those in which the domestic authorities failed to undertake an adequate risk assessment. This is illustrated, for example, by the judgment in K.I. v. France, where the finding of a violation of Article 3 was based on the failure of the domestic courts to carry out a proper risk assessment following the revocation of the applicant’s refugee status due to his convictions for terrorist offences[28], and by the subsequent inadmissibility decision in U v. France, where by contrast the domestic authorities had carried out such an assessment following the revocation of the applicant’s refugee status[29]. Both cases concerned the removal, to their country of origin, of Russian nationals of Chechen origin, whose refugee status had been revoked because they posed a danger to society and national security. These cases are emblematic of the evolving approach taken by the Court. More broadly the Court gives consideration to the assessment of the domestic courts, as for example in E.H. v France[30].

20.  Another example of this approach can be seen in the Court’s cases concerning removals to Algeria. While it found a violation of Article 3 in M.A. v. France[31],it later reached the opposite conclusion in A.M. v. France, noting that the domestic authorities had conducted a sufficiently thorough and individualised assessment[32].

21.  In very exceptional circumstances, the removal of a seriously ill person may amount to a breach of Article 3[33]. With the exception of cases where the domestic authorities had failed to undertake an adequate risk assessment[34], the Court has, to date, found in only one case that removing a seriously ill person would breach Article 3[35]. In these cases, too, the expelling State can avert the risk, and will thus be able to carry out the removal, if it obtains individual and sufficient assurances from the destination State[36]. The level of care existing in the destination country does not have to be equivalent to that provided by the healthcare system in the removing State[37].

Article 4 of Protocol No. 4

22.  Along with Article 3, applicants in situations of mass arrivals and summary returns (“push-backs”) may also rely on Article 4 of Protocol No. 4 to the Convention, which prohibits the collective expulsion of aliens. Under this provision the Court has established a set of procedural conditions aimed at preventing States from being able to remove aliens without examining their personal circumstances and therefore without enabling them to put forward their arguments against the measure taken by the relevant authority. In order to determine whether there was a sufficiently individualised examination, the Court has regard to the particular circumstances of the expulsion and to the “general context at the material time”[38]. If a State exercises jurisdiction within the meaning of Article 1 in the context of interceptions on the high seas (see paragraph 5 above), that State’s responsibility under Article 4 of Protocol No. 4 may be engaged where the effect of the State’s actions is to prevent migrants from reaching the borders of the State or even to push them back to another State^[39]. More recently the Court has established that the summary return of individuals who entered the State’s territory in an unauthorised manner does not breach Article 4 of Protocol No. 4 if the State had provided means of legal entry, in particular border procedures, to which they had genuine and effective access^[40].

Article 8

23.  In contrast to Article 3, the right to respect for private and family life protected by Article 8 is a qualified right. That means that it can be lawfully restricted by the States under certain conditions as provided in the second paragraph of that Article. A restriction may be justified if it is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

24.  In some of the relevant cases before the Court, applicants have argued that they should not be returned to another State because it would break up their private or family life. Such cases arise, in particular, where the migrant’s expulsion has been ordered because he or she has been convicted of a criminal offence[41]. In recent cases concerning such situations, the Court has emphasised that, where the domestic courts have carefully examined the facts, applying the Convention case-law, and have weighed up the applicant’s personal interests against the more general public interest, it is not for the Court to substitute its own assessment of the merits for that of the competent national authorities, except where there are strong reasons for doing so[42]. For that reason, the vast majority of such cases have been declared inadmissible (manifestly ill-founded), including by the Single Judge, or have resulted in a finding of no violation[43]. In a few cases concerning settled migrants with no or very limited ties to their country of origin, the Court has found that their expulsion could be justified only by “very serious reasons”, but that such reasons had not been given by the national courts and the expulsions were therefore disproportionate[44].

25.  In cases concerning settled migrants who have lawfully spent all or a major part of their childhood and youth in the host country, very serious reasons are required to justify expulsion. This is all the more so where the person concerned was a juvenile when he or she committed the offence underlying the expulsion measure[45]. The Court has developed a number of criteria for the assessment of whether an expulsion measure is necessary and proportionate[46].

26.  More generally, where the domestic courts do not give adequately reasoned decisions and examine the proportionality of the expulsion in a superficial manner, preventing the Court from exercising its subsidiary review, an expulsion based on such a decision would breach Article 8[47].

27.  The aforementioned examples of the Court’s case-law under Articles 3 and 8 demonstrate the principles of shared responsibility and subsidiarity: where the domestic courts thoroughly reason their decisions and apply the Convention case-law, the Court is unlikely to find a violation of the Convention. The solidarity between the Court and the domestic courts is further illustrated by its judgments in which it has found that a failure to enforce domestic decisions to provide accommodation for asylum-seekers breached Article 6 § 1 of the Convention[48].

Article 13

28.  The difference between the absolute right guaranteed by Article 3 on the one hand and the rights guaranteed by Article 4 of Protocol No. 4 and Article 8 on the other is also reflected in the requirements that a remedy needs to satisfy in order to be “effective” within the meaning of Article 13. Where the individual has an “arguable complaint” that removal would expose him or her to treatment contrary to Article 2 or 3 of the Convention, he or she must have an effective remedy, in practice as well as in law, at the domestic level in accordance with Article 13 of the Convention, which imperatively requires, inter alia, independent and rigorous scrutiny of any claim that there are substantial grounds for fearing a real risk of treatment contrary to Articles 2 or 3, together with automatic suspensive effect[49]. By contrast, the lack of suspensive effect of a removal decision does not in itself constitute a violation of Article 13 taken together with either Article 4 of Protocol No. 4 or Article 8, where an applicant does not allege that there is a real risk of a violation of the rights guaranteed by Articles 2 or 3 in the destination country[50].

29.  Immigration-related cases are often transversal, which has led the Court to establish a cross-Section thematic Immigration Committee. This Committee is responsible for examining immigration cases across all Contracting Parties in areas where the Court has already developed well‑established case‑law. Its purpose is to combine expertise, and to ensure efficiency and consistency, by examining these cases in a centralised manner. Similarly, a thematic Single Judge has been designated to deal transversally with immigration-related single judge cases in respect of all States.

30.  The proportion of applications submitted to the Court which concern immigration matters is low. Of the cases currently pending before the Court, only approximately 1.5% relate to immigration^[51].

31.  Over the past ten years, the Court has processed more than 430,000 applications, of which around 2% have concerned immigration.

32.  Of these applications, the vast majority were declared inadmissible, while only a minority resulted in a judgment. Over the past ten years, the Court has found violations in 300 cases concerning immigration issues, which represents roughly 6% of all immigration‑related applications lodged with the Court[52].

-        N.D. and N.T. v. Spain [GC], nos. 8675/15 and 8697/15, 13 February 2020

The case concerned the immediate and forcible return of aliens from a land border, following an attempt by a large number of migrants to cross it in an unauthorised manner and en masse. The Court found that there had been no violation of Article 4 of Protocol No. 4, as the lack of individual removal decisions was a consequence of the applicants’ own conduct, because they had not made use of the existing legal means of seeking admission to the national territory.

-        M.N. and Others v. Belgium [GC] (dec.), no. 3599/18, 5 May 2020

The case concerned the refusal to grant visa applications submitted to the Belgian embassy in Lebanon by Syrian nationals who sought to enter Belgium in order to seek asylum there. The Court found that the application was inadmissible, as the respondent State was not exercising jurisdiction extraterritorially over the applicants by processing their visa applications and that no jurisdictional link had been created through the applicants’ appeals.

-        Muhammad and Muhammad v. Romania [GC], no. 80982/12, 15 October 2020

The case concerned proceedings as a result of which the applicants, Pakistani nationals living lawfully in Romania, were declared undesirable and deported. The Court found that the applicants had received only very general information about the legal characterisation of the accusations against them, while none of their specific acts which allegedly endangered national security could be seen from the file. Nor had they been provided with any information about the key stages in the proceedings or about the possibility of accessing classified documents in the file through a lawyer holding authorisation to consult such documents. The Court found that the limitations imposed on the applicants’ enjoyment of their rights under Article 1 of Protocol No. 7 had not been counterbalanced in the domestic proceedings such as to preserve the very essence of those rights.

-        M.A. v. Denmark [GC], no. 6697/18, 9 July 2021

The case concerned the refusal to grant family reunification to a Syrian national who had been granted so-called “temporary protection status” in Denmark. The Court found a violation of Article 8 because the authorities had not struck a fair balance between the relevant interests at stake. In particular, the applicant had not had a real possibility under domestic law of having an individualised assessment of whether a waiting period shorter than the three-year period to which he was subjected, owing to his temporary protection status, was warranted by considerations of family unity, despite it having been accepted in the domestic proceedings that there were insurmountable obstacles in the way of the couple’s enjoyment of family life in their country of origin.

-        Savran v. Denmark [GC], no. 57467/15, 7 December 2021[53]

The case concerned the expulsion of a Turkish national with schizophrenia to his country of origin, following criminal convictions. The Court found that the removal had not breached Article 3, but that it had breached Article 8 as the domestic authorities had failed to examine the applicant’s individual situation adequately.

-        Sanchez-Sanchez v. the United Kingdom [GC], no. 22854/20, 3 November 2022[54]

The case concerned the applicant’s extradition to the United States of America, where he alleged that there was a possibility that he might, if convicted, be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. The Court found that, while the principles set out in the Court’s previous case-law concerning life imprisonment must be applied in domestic cases, an adapted approach was called for in an extradition case such as this, where the applicant had been neither convicted nor sentenced, and where the finding of a violation could prevent him from standing trial. It found that the applicant had not shown that, in the event of his conviction in the USA, there was a real risk that he would be given a sentence of life imprisonment without parole. Accordingly, his extradition would not entail a violation of Article 3.

-        McCallum v. Italy (dec.) [GC], no. 20863/21, 21 September 2022

The case concerned the compatibility with Article 3 of the applicant’s extradition to the United States of America, where she alleged that there was a possibility that she might, if convicted, be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. Decided on the same day as Sanchez-Sanchez v. the United Kingdom, the Court declared the application inadmissible as manifestly ill-founded. It noted that the US authorities had given a commitment that she could not be sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, and that she thus was not at risk of a sentence that would amount to inhuman or degrading punishment.

-        Mansouri v. Italy [GC] (dec.), no. 63386/16, 29 April 2025

The case concerned the lawfulness and conditions of a Tunisian national’s confinement on board an Italian cruise ship used to return him to Tunisia on the basis of an order refusing him entry to Italy. The Court found that the application was inadmissible, as the applicant had failed to exhaust domestic remedies in respect of his complaints under Article 5, and that the minimum threshold to engage Article 3 had not been reached.