Julian Assange's European defence team has said it will try to seek asylum in France for the WikiLeaks founder, whose full hearings for extradition to the United States on spying charges start next week in London.

Key points: Assange's legal team says they will make a personal request to French President Emmanuel Macron

Assange's legal team says they will make a personal request to French President Emmanuel Macron The Wikileaks founder was holed up in Ecuador's London embassy for seven years

The Wikileaks founder was holed up in Ecuador's London embassy for seven years The EU's chief human rights body has said his prosecution would have a chilling effect for journalists

French team member Eric Dupont-Moretti said Assange's case placed at stake "the fate and the status of all journalists".

"We consider the situation is sufficiently serious that our duty is to talk about it [with French President Emmanuel Macron]," the lawyer said.

He was one of a team of lawyers lined up at a Paris news conference to explain why they view the case against Assange as unfair, citing his poor health and alleged violations of his rights while in jail in London.

French members of the team said they have been working on a "concrete demand" for Mr Macron to grant Assange asylum in France, where he has children and where WikiLeaks was present at its founding.

"It is not an ordinary demand," lawyer Antoine Vey said, noting that Assange is not on French soil.

Baltasar Garzon, the Spanish coordinator of Assange's team, reiterated his client's plan to claim that the Trump administration offered him a pardon.

The alleged condition was that Assange must agree to say that Russia was not involved in leaking Democratic National Committee emails during the 2016 US election campaign.

Assange is facing a long time in prison. ( AP: Kirsty Wigglesworth )

Mr Garzon insisted that Assange was "pressured by the Trump administration" but resisted and "the order was given to demand the extradition of Julian Assange," he said.

The White House has firmly denied the claim. However, Mr Garzon said that both testimony and "documentary proof" of the claim will be offered to the court at the full hearing that opens on Monday.

Assange, 48, spent seven years in Ecuador's London embassy before being evicted in April 2019 for what the South American country's President called "spoilt brat" behaviour.

He was arrested by British police for jumping bail in 2012. In November, Sweden dropped a sex crimes investigation against him because so much time had elapsed.

Support for Julian Assange

Assange, who is Australian, has received backing from numerous quarters.

MPs Andrew Wilkie and George Christensen — both members of the Parliamentary Friends of Julian Assange Home Group — were in London this week where they met Assange in prison.

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"I think this is one of the most important and significant political trials of this generation, in fact longer," said John McDonnell, a senior figure in the British Labour Party.

The father of Assange insisted at the Paris news conference that his son was not a criminal.

"I can't for the life of me understand why he's still in prison," John Shipton said.

Dunja Mijatovic, the Council of Europe's Human Rights Commissioner, said Assange's case raised questions about the protection of people who publish classified information in the public interest, exposing human rights violations.

"The broad and vague nature of the allegations against Julian Assange, and of the offences listed in the indictment, are troubling as many of them concern activities at the core of investigative journalism in Europe and beyond," she said.

Andrew Wilkie (left) met with the British Opposition Leader ahead of visiting Julian Assange at Belmarsh Prison. ( ABC News: Andrew Greaves )

"Consequently, allowing Julian Assange's extradition on this basis would have a chilling effect on media freedom, and could ultimately hamper the press in performing its task as purveyor of information and public watchdog in democratic societies."

Ms Mijatovic said she was also concerned about detention conditions in the United States and about the sentence likely to be imposed on Assange. He could spend decades in prison if convicted.

The Council of Europe, which describes itself as the continent's leading human rights organisation, has 47 member states including Britain, all of which are signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights.

Assange's WikiLeaks website made global headlines in early 2010 when it published a classified US military video showing a 2007 helicopter attack in Baghdad that killed a dozen people, including two Reuters news staff.

Since then, the website has published a vast amount of secret US diplomatic cables and other confidential documents.

Assange presents himself as a champion of free speech holding a superpower to account, but critics accuse him of irresponsibly putting lives at risk with his unedited information dumps.

After WikiLeaks published leaked emails during the 2016 US presidential campaign that damaged Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, he was accused of complicity in Russian efforts to meddle in US politics and undermine the West.

ABC/wires