Legal briefing: Statelessness and the right to respect for private and family life October 2024 Respect for private and family life Everyone has the right to respect for his or her private and family life, home and communications. While the CJEU addresses statelessness and nationality deprivation through various provisions of the EU asylum acquis42 and while, similarly to the ECHR, the CFR does not contain a provision ensuring the right to a nationality, it has, occasionally, addressed statelessness and nationality issues in the context of the right to respect for private and family life under Article 7 CFR, particularly as regards children’s access to identity documents, free movement rights, and EU citizenship (further details in the section below). As the CJEU emphasised in Rottmann, “Member States must, when exercising their powers in the sphere of nationality, have due regard to European Union law”43, which includes upholding the EU’s values and the rights enshrined in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, including Article 7.44 The CJEU has also upheld the right of every EU citizen to reside with their family in the Member State of their origin or another Member State, and that the child’s family life with their two parents is protected by Article 7 CFR read in conjunction with Article 24(2) CFR, which states that “in all actions relating to children, whether taken by public authorities or private institutions, the child's best interests must be a primary consideration”.45 The CFR also protects a child’s right to obtain identity documents without discrimination, including on the grounds of their parents sexual or gender identity. In the reasoning behind some of the CJEU’s case law on this matter, the CJEU noted that according to the European Court of Human Rights, the ECHR protects the right to family life that the child enjoys with their parents.46 The CJEU has also assessed whether Member States’ decisions complied with Article 7 CFR in the context of deprivation and loss of nationality. In cases such as Tjebbes and JY,47 the Court held that, as part of the examination of proportionality, national authorities should ensure that a decision to deprive someone of their nationality, or to refuse granting them a nationality, is consistent with the fundamental rights guaranteed of the Charter, the rights guaranteed in Article 7 thereof have the same meaning and the same scope as those guaranteed in Article 8 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, signed in Rome on 4 November 1950.” 42 ENS and The AIRE Centre, Litigation Toolkit on Statelessness, Volume II: Jurisprudence, June 2024. 43 CJEU, Case C-135/08, Rottmann, 2 March 2010, paragraph 45. 44 CJEU, Case C-118/20, JY v. Wiener Landesregierung, , 18 January 2022, paragraph 61, and CJEU, Case C-490/20, V.M.A. v. Stolichna obshtina, rayon ‘Pancharevo’, 14 December 2021, paragraphs 59-64. See ENS and The AIRE Centre, Litigation Toolkit on Statelessness, Volume I: Impact litigation and judicial mechanisms to effect change, June 2024, p. 25 for more information about statelessness in EU law. 45 See e.g. CJEU, Case C-490/20, V.M.A. v. Stolichna obshtina, rayon ‘Pancharevo’, 14 December 2021, paragraphs 59, 63. 46 CJEU, Case C-490/20, V.M.A. v. Stolichna obshtina, rayon ‘Pancharevo’, 14 December 2021, paragraph 61, which refers to ECtHR, K. and T. v. Finland (application no. 25702/94), 12 July 2001. 47 CJEU, Case C-221/17, Tjebbes and Others v. Minister van Buitenlandse Zaken, 12 March 2019; CJEU, Case C-118/20, JY v. Wiener Landesregierung, 18 January 2022. 9