European Journal of Migration
and Law 19 (2017) 101–135
brill.com/emil
Why Union Law Can and Should Protect Stateless
Persons
Katja Swider
Doctoral researcher at the Amsterdam Center for European Law and
Governance, University of Amsterdam
k.j.swider@uva.nl
Maarten den Heijer
Assistant Professor of International Law at the University of Amsterdam,
the Netherlands
m.denheijer@uva.nl
Abstract
This contribution argues that the European Union can and should establish a legal
framework for the identification and protection of stateless persons who reside in one
of the Member States. Our proposal for EU legislative action is based on the worrying
observation that the post-war international legal framework for protecting stateless persons has failed to take root in a majority of EU Member States. This contribution analyses the potential of the EU to address protection failures stemming from legislative
inactivity of Member States. We argue that the EU is competent to address the issue and
that EU action need not conflict with Member States’ prerogatives in nationality
* Katja Swider’s PhD research on statelessness receives funding from the Netherlands Organ
isation for Scientific Research (NWO). This contribution compiles and builds on: K. Swider
Protection and Identification of Stateless Persons Through EU Law, Amsterdam Centre for
European Law and Governance Research Paper No. 2014–05, July 2014; a note on the same
topic published by the Meijers Committee of which Maarten den Heijer was the lead author:
Commissie Meijers, Proposal for an EU directive on the identification and the protection of stateless persons, CM 1410, 13 October 2014, available at http://www.commissie-meijers.nl/; and a
report for the European Parliament co-authored by Katja Swider: Practices and Approaches
in EU Member States to Prevent and End Statelessness, Study for the LIBE Committee, Nov.
2015. The authors would like to thank Gerard-René de Groot, Leonard Besselink and Inge
Sturkenboom (UNHCR) for their helpful comments on an earlier draft.
© katja swider and maarten den heijer, ���7 | doi 10.1163/15718166-12340004
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the prevailing CC-BY-NC license at the time of
publication.