Why Union Law Can And Should Protect Stateless Persons 125 by reference to the national law of the Member State concerned.’92 The same message features in Declaration No. 2 on nationality of a Member State, annexed to the Treaty on European Union in 1992.93 It is worth noting that this declaration was dropped during the latest amendment of the European Union Treaties by the Treaty of Lisbon in 2009. The disappearance of the Declaration from the Treaty texts has largely gone unnoticed, and the Declaration is still occasionally referred to in post-Lisbon documentation.94 It is clear that EU measures aimed at avoidance of statelessness will have an adverse impact on the prerogative of Member States to regulate their nationality laws. Such EU legislation most likely would involve a requirement on Member States to grant nationality to persons in the situations specified in the 1961 Convention. By contrast, legislation on the identification and protection of stateless persons—the subject of our proposal—does not in itself affect sovereignty in the field of nationality. It would only facilitate the recognition of the status of stateless person as defined in international law and set their standard of treatment as well as the conditions for granting them lawful residence. Admittedly, a determination of statelessness or the granting of legal residence to a stateless person is likely to have the effect that the person would qualify for acquisition of nationality under Member States’ nationality laws, as may be the case with stateless children born in a Member State or after prolonged lawful residence in the Member State. However, this need not constitute a bar for adopting such rules, as it is generally accepted that nationality laws of the Member States may be influenced, in a variety of ways, by Union law. Even though the Treaty does not endow the EU with the competence to regulate the acquisition and loss of nationalities of Member States, the influence of EU law on nationality matters is inevitable and frequent. At the current state of development of EU law, it is apparent that the EU has a strong impact on Member States’ nationality laws and policies through, for example, the formation of the rights of EU citizens, the legislation on asylum and immigration, and the case law of the CJEU. First, secondary EU legislation on free movement of EU citizens, immigration of third-country nationals and asylum has an impact on access to nationalities of the Member States. For example, the requirement of legal residence for a certain number of years is usually central to accessing nationality through 92 Edinburgh Decision of 1992, OJ 1992, C 348, p. 1. 93 Declaration No. 2 on Nationality of a Member State, annexed to the Treaty on European Union (OJ 1992 C 191, p. 98). 94 See, for example, Opinion of the Advocate General Szpunar of 20 May 2014 in Case C‑202/13 (McCarthy), para 45, footnote 24. European Journal of Migration and Law 19 (2017) 101–135