Nine European leaders are calling for the European Convention on Human Rights to be reinterpreted to allow migrants who commit crimes to be expelled more easily.

The European Court of Human Rights has extended the scope of the Convention too far, argue the signatories of a written statement spearheaded by Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Danish PM Mette Frederiksen. 

Italy and Denmark want to “open a political debate on some European conventions to which we are bound and on the capacity of those conventions, a few decades after they were written, to address the great issues of our time, starting precisely with the issue of the migration phenomenon,” Meloni said Thursday evening.

Leaders from Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland also signed the document.

The countries call on the human rights court to allow them greater freedom to decide when to expel foreign nationals who commit crimes and to keep track of those who cannot be expelled. It also wants the exploitation of migrants by hostile states to be addressed. Lithuania, for example, filed a case against Belarus at the International Court of Justice earlier this week for stoking political discord in the EU by facilitating illegal border crossings. 

Hannah Roberts contributed reporting.