Legal briefing: Statelessness and the right to respect for private and family life October 2024 The right to respect for private and family life may also be raised at domestic level, either by directly invoking the application of Article 8 ECHR or Article 7 CFR before the national courts, or by relying on an equivalent provision in national law. There are several examples of cases where national courts have clarified the scope and application of provisions of national law in the context of statelessness, while making reference to Article 8 ECHR.216 Routes to regularisation and protection Some domestic courts have made findings which recognise that the absence of routes for stateless people to regularise their stay, or barriers to accessing existing routes, constitute an interference with the right to respect for private and family life. According to the Supreme Administrative Court of Czechia,217 the failure of the State to grant a right to stay on the territory while awaiting the outcome of a statelessness determination procedure is a violation of the right to respect for private and family life. The Court held that applicants for statelessness status should be issued documentation pending their application in the same way that is issued to asylum-seekers. Stateless people may also remain in a state of ‘legal limbo’ if they are unable to access routes to protection due to requirements they cannot fulfil. Until 2015, Hungary only allowed people who were “lawfully staying” in the country to apply for statelessness status, which made it practically impossible for people to be recognised as stateless. The Constitutional Court218 concluded that stateless persons were not provided under national law with an effective and accessible procedure to determine statelessness status in Hungary, which was later confirmed by the ECtHR in the same case (Sudita Keita v. Hungary219). Article 8 ECHR has also been argued as the basis to require registration of a person as stateless, particularly in the Netherlands. However, the Dutch Council of State220 confirmed the decision of the authorities not to register the statelessness status of a Palestinian refugee in the municipal civil records, despite the argument that this constituted an interference with the right to respect for private and family life. The decision in this case was made on the grounds that an original UNRWA document and an 216 Examples of cases in this section are intended to illustrate the relevance of the right to respect for private and family life within domestic contexts and are detailed further on the Statelessness Case Law Database. The list of cases in this section is not intended to be exhaustive. 217 Czechia, Supreme Administrative Court, H. A. A. v Ministry of Interior, 4 Azs 365/2018-74, 12 March 2019. 218 Hungary, Constitutional Court, Az Alkotmánybíróság 6/2015. (III. 25.) AB Határozata, 25 March 2015. See a similar case in Bulgaria, Supreme Administrative Court, Ruling No. 2481, Case No. 1377/2020, 17 February 2020. 219 ECtHR, Sudita Keita v. Hungary (application no. 42321/15), 13 May 2020. 220 Netherlands, Council of State (Raad van State), ECLI:NL:RBDHA:2018:9575, 27 November 2019. 36