Amnesty report warns Europe is dismantling rights protections for migrants

LONDON, United Kingdom (MNTV) – Europe’s human rights record deteriorated significantly in 2025, with governments across the continent systematically weakening protections for refugees and migrants, refusing to implement international arrest warrants, continuing arms transfers to Israel and criminalizing peaceful protests in support of Palestinians, according to Amnesty International’s annual global report.

On migration, the report describes a concerted effort across Europe to construct what it calls “a second-tier system of diminished human rights protections,” driven by xenophobia and anti-Black, anti-Muslim and anti-Arab racism.

EU member states downgraded asylum rules and pursued punitive deportation measures, while 27 Council of Europe member states called for weakened migrant protections under the European Convention on Human Rights. Greece detained hundreds of asylum seekers following an unlawful temporary suspension of the right to seek asylum.

Poland similarly suspended asylum rights at its border with Belarus. Austria and Germany conducted forced deportations to Syria despite it not being considered safe for returns, while a coalition of countries sought to resume forced returns to Afghanistan.

Italy led what the report describes as a harmful externalization agenda, expanding its use of migration detention centers in Albania to process asylum seekers away from European legal scrutiny.

The report notes that those most affected — predominantly Black, Muslim and other racialized people — were being transferred to places where violations would be harder to monitor and challenge.

Arms and lack of accountability

On arms and accountability, the report documents how several European governments continued supplying weapons to Israel. Germany reinstated the possibility of arms transfers,

France continued licensing war material exports, the Czech Republic, U.K. and Serbia all maintained or increased transfers, while Ireland, Portugal and Slovenia failed to prevent Israeli arms shipments from transiting through their airspace or ports.

Accountability for Israeli leaders also faltered in Europe.

Hungary and Poland openly refused to implement International Criminal Court arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, while Italy failed to surrender Libyan militia member Osama Elmasry Njeem accused of serious human rights violations.

Freedom of expression came under pressure in Western Europe too.

The U.K. government proscribed the direct-action group Palestine Action as a terrorist organization, triggering what the report describes as a widespread campaign of peaceful civil disobedience.

By year’s end, at least 2,700 people had been arrested following large-scale peaceful demonstrations, with a judicial review of the proscription still before the courts. Across the region, foreign agent laws modeled on Russian legislation were proposed or adopted in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Hungary and Slovakia. Strategic lawsuits against journalists and human rights defenders continued to have a chilling effect in Croatia and Poland.

In Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Russia continued its war in Ukraine with relentless aerial attacks on civilian infrastructure, systematic enforced disappearances and torture in occupied territories, and measures to erase Ukrainian cultural identity through compulsory school curricula.

Georgia descended into authoritarian practices, with authorities beating demonstrators, deploying tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannon reportedly laced with toxic chemicals, and jailing journalists and activists.

Belarus, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan all recorded serious deteriorations in civil liberties, rule of law and treatment of minorities.