France Selected country examples France • • • Centralized administrative SDP conducted by the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (Office Français de Protection des Réfugiés et Apatrides, or OFPRA). The protection of stateless persons was included in the French Asylum Law of 1952. Article L812 of the Code de l’entrée et du séjour des étrangers et du droit d’asile (amendments of 29 July 2015) sets out the details of the procedure. Good practices include: • • a shared burden of proof, in practice; • interviews, in practice; • access to interpretation; • • • an application procedure accessible to all individuals in France, without any legal stay requirement or time limits; the right to appeal a negative first-instance decision though not with automatic legal stay until the end of the procedure; and the availability of judicial review. Statelessness and asylum determination procedures are implemented by separate divisions within OFPRA. However, if an individual raises claims for both refugee and statelessness status, the two determination procedures are combined and the asylum authorities can grant a combined “stateless refugee” status. Refugee status provides more comprehensive protection that statelessness status from which “stateless refugees” benefit. U N H C R > G P P AC T I O N 6 : E S TA B L I S H I N G S TAT E L E S S N E S S D E T E R M I N AT I O N P R O C E D U R E S 23