The government has high hopes of reaching an agreement in Brighton next month that will lead to major reforms to the European Convention on Human Rights and the court in Strasbourg that enforces it. Britain’s proposals are set out in a draft declaration which the government hopes will be approved by the 47 member states of the Council of Europe that are bound by the convention when they meet at a high-level and, no doubt, high-security conference by the seaside.

What is not on the table is withdrawing the right of 800 million Europeans to petition the court directly - the reason the court now has more than 150,000 pending applications. Although several member states might welcome such a drastic curtailment of the court’s powers, I am told that none was willing to say so publicly.

Instead, the leaked draft puts a strong emphasis on implementing the convention at national level in order to reduce the number of cases brought before the court. This is backed up by some important amendments which Britain hopes will become the 15th protocol to the convention. Of the two reforms that stand out, one would impose stricter admissibility criteria, while the other would allow the court to issue advisory opinions.

Paragraph 23 of the draft declaration would render an application inadmissible ‘if it is the same in substance as a matter that has been examined by a national court taking into account the rights guaranteed by the convention’. But there would be two exceptions, allowing Strasbourg to admit an application if the ‘national court clearly erred in its interpretation or application of the convention rights’, or if the application ‘raises a serious question affecting the interpretation or application of the convention’. It would be for the court to decide whether a case came within these exceptions.

What is not clear is whether the national court would even have had to consider the individual applicant’s claim. On this wording, all that would need to have been considered at national level was the issue raised by the case. According to a ‘non-paper’ circulated last October, the intention is to reduce the number of cases being reconsidered in Strasbourg. Certainly, paragraph 21 of the declaration seeks to ensure that the court ‘adjudicates only those cases in which the principle or the significance of the violation warrants consideration by the court’. Where does that leave the right of individual petition, described in the draft as a ‘cornerstone of the convention system’? What’s proposed may be fine if you live in a country that respects human rights but must be deeply alarming to those in Europe’s ‘emerging democracies’.

And it is not as if the reform will reduce the court’s workload. According to a leaked ‘preliminary opinion of the court’ adopted on 20 February, ‘it is probable that assessment of whether proper or due consideration had occurred or whether the national courts had manifestly erred would, in any event, require systematic and thorough examination’. The court says it already considers similar factors in deciding whether to reject an application as ‘manifestly ill-founded’.

The judges were equally sniffy about the idea in paragraph 19 that they should give advisory opinions. These would, it seems, be available only very rarely. First, a state wanting to use the system would have to opt in. Second, the case would have to get as far as the state’s supreme court or its constitutional court. Even then, the court would have discretion over whether to refer a question to the human rights court. Finally, the national court would not be bound by the Strasbourg judges’ opinion.

That said, if the opinion was applied by the national court then ‘the individual in whose case the opinion was sought’ would ‘ordinarily have no further right to make an application to the [human rights] court on the same matter’. In their paper last month, the judges took the view that this proposal merited ‘further reflection’, adding that ‘a reflection paper prepared by the court on this subject will be issued subsequently’.

This attempt to kick the proposal into the long grass may reflect a difference of opinion among the court’s 47 judges. But it hardly makes things easier for British officials, who not only have to win over fellow diplomats, but also a disparate bench of judges. Those judges say they will accept a reduced caseload only if the right of individual petition is preserved and effective mechanisms are put in place to accommodate well-founded cases that the court cannot deal with.

Above all, the judges are unwilling to cede any of their powers to the member states. There’s no question of that, British officials insist. The only formal limit on judicial powers that could not be overridden by the court is a plan to reduce the period within which an application must be lodged from six months to four, three or two. And that idea came from the judges themselves.

But there are plenty of proposals designed to limit the Strasbourg judges’ discretion. They are told more than once in the draft declaration that they must apply the admissibility criteria ‘strictly’. And Britain wants the principles of subsidiarity and the ‘margin of appreciation’ enjoyed by member states to be defined in statutory language for the first time and enshrined in the convention, ensuring they are not circumscribed by overlapping judicial interpretations.

This may not be a full-frontal assault on the court and its powers. But it is a reminder that the ultimate power lies not with judges but with ministers.