Meijers Committee standing committee of experts on international immigration, refugee and criminal law CM2016 Policy brief on ‘Differential treatment of citizens with dual or multiple nationality and the prohibition of discrimination’ 6 December 2020 1. Introduction Over the past decades strong legal standards against discrimination have been developed both at the international and European levels. The prohibition of discrimination, including on the grounds of racial and ethnic origin, is firmly anchored in legal instruments, including but not limited to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the European Convention on Human Rights (including its Twelfth Protocol), the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the EU Racial Equality Directive (2000/43/EC). Whereas express racial or ethnic discrimination is clearly unlawful, attention must also be paid to rules or practices that do not directly discriminate on the grounds of racial or ethnic origin but that may nevertheless have the effect of putting racial and ethnic minorities at a disadvantage. This policy brief highlights the use of dual nationality as a selection criterion in legislation or administrative practice and the risk that this will negatively affect the equal enjoyment of rights and benefits by citizens of immigrant origin. In several European countries, dual nationals have been subjected to less favourable treatment in legislation or in practice. One area where this risk is particularly visible is in nationality law. Over the last decade several countries in Western Europe amended their nationality laws in response to so-called homegrown terrorists.1 New possibilities to withdraw the nationality of citizens who participated in Islamic State or other terrorist organisations were introduced in order to expel or avoid the return of those (ex-)citizens. In most cases these laws, complying with international standards against statelessness, provide that no deprivation is possible if it would result in the person becoming stateless. As a result, the effects of citizenship deprivation are felt only by persons with dual or multiple nationality. Often these dual nationals are citizens of immigrant origin who have lived for a long time (sometimes their whole lives) in the state concerned. On the other hand, ‘single nationals’ who engage in the same terrorist activities may face criminal prosecution but not the withdrawal of their citizenship. Yet deprivation of nationality is not the only example of dual nationals being treated less favourably than single nationals. Exclusion of dual nationals from certain political functions or from voting rights has been proposed by populist politicians and is present in the national law 1 On this development see e.g. A. Macklin & R. Bauböck (eds), ‘The Return of Banishment: Do the New Denationalisation Policies Weaken Citizenship?’, EUI Working Paper RSCAS 2015/14. 1