14 In Estonia, the law currently provides for a broadly similar process for acquisition of nationality by children of stateless parents. However, things will change significantly from the beginning of 2016 when law reform that was passed by the Estonian parliament in January 2015 finally enters into force. From then on, children born in Estonia to parents with “undetermined citizenship”, and whose parents have lived in the country for at least five years, will acquire citizenship of Estonia immediately and automatically after birth. Yet, parents will still have the right to refuse such granting of citizenship during the period of one year after the child’s birth. Furthermore, even following new amendments to the Citizenship act, other cases of otherwise stateless children born in Estonia are not provided with a solution. For instance, where one or more of the child’s parents hold the citizenship of another country but are unable to confer this to the child – exposing the child to statelessness – the law does not offer a special regime for access to nationality.106 To get a better sense of where the legislation of European states exhibits strengths and what shape the problems alluded to above actually take, it is necessary to take a closer look at the laws of states in each of these assessment categories. In doing so, a number of important trends emerge. STATES WITH FULL SAFEGUARDS In respect of the first category, those states with “full safeguards”, two different approaches have been taken – as indeed permitted under the relevant international norms. 17 states have a system in place that automatically provides nationality to a child who would otherwise be stateless and is born on the territory, i.e. the optimal safeguard, as mentioned earlier.107 Four countries make their nationality to such children accessible by application, with a procedure that is compliant with the standard set out in the 1961 Convention (Liechtenstein, Malta, Ukraine and the United Kingdom). Nevertheless, as mentioned above, where a child is therefore required to “wait” for a significant period after birth before acquiring any nationality, this can contradict the terms of the CRC. Problems in practice In both of these sub-groups, however, there are states in which the formulation of the law may cause difficulties in practice. Finland, for instance, confers nationality to “a child who is born in Finland and who does not acquire the citizenship of any foreign State at birth, and who does not even have a secondary right to acquire the citizenship of any other foreign State”.108 Along similar lines, France and Italy both stipulate that nationality is granted where the child does not – or in the case of France, is by no means allowed to – acquire the nationality of either parent according to the law of the parents’ state(s).109 Since states may also apply their citizenship legislation in an arbitrary or discriminatory manner, a child may be left stateless because the state of the parents’ nationality fails to grant nationality in evident disregard for the terms of the law,110 but would then appear to fall outside the scope of the safeguard in place in France and Italy. In practice, it is likely to fall to the parents to find a way to prove, to the satisfaction of the state in which their stateless child was born, that the child lacks any nationality. This potential difficulty is also apparent in the formulation of the Maltese law which requires the stateless person seeking to benefit from the safeguard to “[satisfy] the Minister that he is and always has been stateless”. Other states adopt a similar approach in practice, even if this is not set out in the law. For instance, in Italy, research has shown that children of stateless parents can only benefit from the safeguard in the legislation if the parents have first been formally recognised as stateless through the statelessness determination procedure, which blocks access to nationality for such children in many cases, especially for Roma children whose parents have not been able to establish their stateless status.111 ROSA’S STORY Rosa and her husband are both nationals of Cuba. They have been living in Italy for about 9 years. In 2013, they had a daughter. When Rosa registered her daughter with the Cuban embassy, nobody told her that her daughter had no direct right to Cuban citizenship – the only way to obtain Cuban citizenship would have been to stay three months on Cuban soil with her daughter. Rosa and her husband recorded their daughter’s birth at the municipality in which they are resident, never thinking about the possibility that she could have been stateless since at the municipality, the little girl was recorded as having Cuban citizenship. It was not until many months later, when Rosa wanted to visit Cuba to deal with some family issues and approached the embassy to obtain a passport for her daughter that she was told that her daughter was not considered a Cuban citizen. The embassy explained that her daughter’s was one of the few specific cases in which children born on the Italian territory could apply for Italian citizenship. So Rosa started to gather information and went to the municipality to claim her daughter’s Italian nationality. At first, the municipal officials said that her daughter had to wait until majority to proceed with the application for Italian citizenship. Rosa’s case was the first case known to these authorities of Cuban citizens with a daughter who was born in Italy, which is why the officials of the town did not know how to proceed. So Rosa pointed out what was specified in the Italian legislation and showed them the certificate of the Cuban embassy in order to prove that her daughter’s was a special case, according to the law. After this, the municipality forwarded the request to the Interior Ministry and after five months, Rosa’s daughter was confirmed as having Italian citizenship. Despite the lack of initial information, they were able to obtain