Why Union Law Can And Should Protect Stateless Persons 123 for determining statelessness affect the rights conferred and protected by the legal order of the Union, such procedures lie within the scope of Union law and must take due regard of the principles of Union law.86 Although it will normally not matter for the application of those directives whether a person is stateless or a third-country national, rendering it unnecessary to make a formal distinction in individual cases, some provisions in these Directives do have different legal effects for persons with and persons without a nationality. For example, Article 36 of the Asylum Procedures Directive (2013/32/EU), laying down the ‘safe country of origin’-concept, sets forth that for persons with a nationality, only the country of nationality can be a safe country of origin. The country of origin of stateless persons, however, is defined as any country where they have been formerly habitually resident. Not only the distinction between stateless persons and third-country nationals is relevant under existing Union law. Even more consequential would be a failure to properly identify whether someone is stateless or in fact a Union citizen. If France, for example, wishes to forcibly evict Roma from illegally set up camps and expel them from its territory, it makes quite a difference for their position under EU law whether they are treated as stateless or as a national of another Member State and thus an EU citizen.87 A lack of clarity in such cases bears with it the risk that persons are treated under the wrong legal regime. It could well be argued that in those cases, the principle of giving useful effect to EU law already obliges Member States to have in place fair procedures for determining whether a person is stateless. Finally, increasing the level of protection of stateless persons and ensuring their participation in socioeconomic life squares fully with the foundational values of the Union, namely respect for human dignity and other human rights, combatting social exclusion and discrimination, and promoting integration policies which foster social cohesion and economic dynamism.88 86 See, mutatis mutandis, Case C-135/08 (Rottmann), para 42, 48. 87 For a comparable case in The Netherlands, see District Court The Hague 5 August 2009, ECLI:NL:RBSGR:2009:BJ6433, concerning a person with an ineffective nationality of former Czechoslovakia, whose residence right in the Netherlands depended on whether he was to be recognized as stateless or as a Slovak national. 88 Art. 2 and 3 TEU. Also see Conclusions of the European Council of 26/27 June 2014, para 1.6. European Journal of Migration and Law 19 (2017) 101–135