Pushing frontiers of Article 8 ECHR: Legislative manipulation of migrant attachments in Sweden, Denmark and UK

This blog explores recent efforts in Denmark, the UK and Sweden to recalibrate the balance between individual rights and state interests under Article 8 ECHR:
🔹 Denmark's new ’expulsion reform’ seeks to make deportation expulsion the presumptive outcome for non-citizens convicted of serious offences and explicitly aims to influence future Strasbourg jurisprudence.
🔹 The UK's Immigration and Asylum Bill would assign no weight to private or family life developed during periods of unlawful residence.
🔹 Sweden has abolished access to permanent residence for most refugees and is considering revoking permanent permits already granted, while largely postponing Article 8 scrutiny until a removal decision.

Among other issues, we discuss how these reforms sidestep the duty of states to tailor any interference with Article 8 to the individual circumstances of the case, and to give weight to basic rule of law principles including legal certainty under Article 8.