Addressing Statelessness through the Hungarian Citizenship Act person concerned would otherwise become stateless. Considering this and the aforementioned, the Hungarian Citizenship Act partially ignores the implementation of the jus soli principle applied to avoid statelessness as a quasicomplementary principle. This is done by reducing the personal scope of the 1961 Convention not to incorporate everyone born on Hungarian territory who would otherwise become stateless. Consequently, the essence of the phrase ‘who would otherwise be stateless’ under art 1 of the 1961 Convention is lost. CONCLUDING REMARKS In view of all this, I have argued that when it comes to Hungary’s legislative safeguards against statelessness, the glass is half empty. In order to further enhance these safeguards, it would be necessary to amend the legislation to ensure that no child would be stateless if they were born in Hungary, could not acquire the citizenship of their parents and could not fulfil the additional conditions for their parents. For instance, the immigration status or the marital status of the parents should be completely independent from the child and the child’s acquisition of citizenship. Considering Hungary’s international legal obligations and the wording of the 1961 Convention (in particular, the expression of ‘otherwise become stateless’), it is time to amend the Hungarian Citizenship Act regarding the acquisition of citizenship in art 3(3) in accordance with this criterion. To fully comply with the 1961 Convention, it is either necessary to take the phrase ‘otherwise become stateless’ literally and amend the current law with this wording, or another technical legal solution is needed which does not exclude any of the persons discussed in this commentary. 209

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