2023 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 5(2) D Renunciation, Revocation and Restoration of Citizenship Hungarian citizenship is terminated by renunciation or revocation.41 Article 8 of the Hungarian Citizenship Act defines the rules related to renunciation. According to this article, Hungarian citizenship can be renounced with a statement addressed to the President of Hungary in the event that: foreign citizenship is also held or is likely to be acquired and the person concerned is not listed in the personal data and residential address register, or the person has left the territory of Hungary with the intention of settling abroad, or a Hungarian citizen living abroad does not have a registered place of residence in Hungary. This wording provides guarantees to prevent statelessness. A person can only renounce their Hungarian citizenship if it does not render them stateless, so the Hungarian Citizenship Act requires that the person concerned either be a dual national or make it likely to acquire another nationality. Furthermore, art 8(4) of the Hungarian Citizenship Act provides the opportunity to restore Hungarian citizenship within three years from the date of renunciation if foreign citizenship has not been acquired. This provision therefore serves to avoid former Hungarian citizens becoming stateless, if for whatever reason the person concerned has not acquired foreign nationality. E Evaluating the Hungarian Citizenship Act in Light of the Prevention of Childhood Statelessness After presenting the rules concerning the acquisition of Hungarian citizenship, I now examine the Hungarian Citizenship Act in relation to its shortcomings regarding the prevention of statelessness, specifically childhood statelessness. While the legislators’ efforts to avoid and eradicate childhood statelessness have visible results at the level of legislation, as previously explained, the extent and depth of these efforts are not completely satisfactory; they are not fully in line with obligations under the 1961 Convention. For instance, if foreign parents are unable to pass on their citizenship to their child born in Hungary, the child becomes stateless, because there is no legal guarantee for the child to acquire citizenship. This can be illustrated by the case of a child of a Syrian woman born out of wedlock in the territory of Hungary who was rendered stateless.42 Furthermore, in order to fully implement the obligation of elimination of childhood statelessness, it would be necessary for legislators to take into account the situation of children born in Hungary and whose parents are recognised stateless persons with stateless status, but at the same time do not have ‘domicile’ (lakóhely) in Hungary.43 The current legislation does not ensure the avoidance of childhood statelessness and the acquisition of Hungarian citizenship when these conditions exist together. At the same time, the 1961 Convention places an explicit obligation on the contracting states, according to which they shall ensure citizenship jus soli if the 41 42 43 Article 9 of the Hungarian Citizenship Act provides for the revocation of citizenship from a person who obtained it by breaking the laws, such as by providing false data and misleading the authority with false facts or data: Hungarian Citizenship Act (n 3) art 9. However, the Hungarian Citizenship Act also sets a time limit of 10 years for such a revocation at art 9(1). Legislative Decree 276/1969 ‘Nationality Law’, s 3(a) (Syrian Arab Republic). According to this Syrian nationality law, a woman cannot confer her nationality on the child if the child was born abroad and the father cannot confer his nationality on the child either (for instance, if the father does not acknowledge the child). ‘Thematic Joint Submission on the Right of Every Child to Acquire a Nationality under Article 7 CRC’ (Committee on the Rights of the Child, 84th Pre-Sessional Working Group, Hungary, 1 September 2019) 7–8. 208