Statelessness Working Paper Series No. 2017/08 to the bottom’ phenomenon.68 The recurring failure of the Common European Asylum System is a good example: Member States deliberately lower their standards of protection to decrease relative attractiveness in comparison to other Member States to avoid having to handle asylum-seekers. The same thing could happen in the case of stateless persons.69 This is pointed out by Swider and den Heijer as well, who are nevertheless in favour of an EU directive on statelessness.70 The author notes that the fear of the pull-effect should not hinder Member States to comply with their obligations, but a transparent and effective implementation of such directive, if adopted, should be a priority. Whether including statelessness as a separate ground for EU-harmonised protection is going to happen or not, the EU should keep advocating for the rights of stateless persons both within and outside its borders. As long as a statelessness-specific EU directive is not considered a political possibility, the EU should promote the idea of creating national statelessness-specific mechanisms in the Member States.71 To this end, the EU should further encourage the remaining Member States—Cyprus, Estonia, Malta, and Poland—to accede to the 1954 Convention. Statelessness should also continue to be on the agenda of the EU’s foreign policy: raising awareness of situations of statelessness and discriminatory nationality laws, and promoting solutions in other parts of the world could possibly decrease the number of stateless migrants arriving in the EU.72 The external promotion of addressing statelessness, at the same time, encourages the EU to adhere to the ‘practice what you preach’ principle.73 3.3. The Council of Europe: routes to the codification of implicit obligations for statelessness determination Notably, the Parliamentary Assembly and the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe have adopted several soft law tools on the prevention and reduction of statelessness. However, the identification and protection of stateless persons seem to have been of secondary importance on their agendas. In CoE soft law, only sporadic mentions are found on the need to establish statelessness determination procedures. In 1955, Parliamentary Assembly Recommendation 87 (1955) was issued, calling for member States to sign and ratify the 1954 Convention without delay.74 In 1983, Committee of Ministers Recommendation No. R (83) 1 on stateless nomads and nomads of undetermined nationality called for States to accede to the 1954 Convention, and to apply it. Expressly asking for its application signals that the Committee of Ministers acknowledges that the 1954 Convention is not working properly without a statelessness determination procedure. In April 2014, the Parliamentary Assembly released Resolution 1989 (2014) on the access to nationality and the effective implementation of the ECN.75 The Resolution begins by recalling that the ECN 68 Gábor Gyulai, ‘Statelessness in the EU Framework for International Protection’, European Journal of Migration and Law 14 (2012), p. 294. 69 Maarten den Heijer and Katja Swider, ‘Why Union Law Can and Should Protect Stateless Persons’, Amsterdam Centre for European Law and Governance Research Paper No. 2016-03, p. 16. Available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2823627 [accessed 18 April 2017] 70 Ibid. 71 Ibid. 72 Inge Sturkenboom and Laura van Waas, ‘How real is the risk of a “stateless generation” in Europe? Reflections on how to fulfil the right to a nationality for children born to refugee and migrant parents in the European Union’ (2016), available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2877368 [accessed 12 September 2017] 73 European Network on Statelessness, ‘Submission to the European Commission Consultation on the future of Home Affairs policies: An open and safe Europe – what next?’ (January 2014), available at: https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/sites/homeaffairs/files/what-is-new/publicconsultation/2013/pdf/0027/organisations/ens-european-network-on-statelessness_en.pdf [accessed 4 April 2017] 74 Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly Recommendation 87 (1955) on statelessness (25 October 1955) 75 Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly Recommendation 1989 (2014) on access to nationality and the effective implementation of the European Convention on Nationality (9 April 2014) 13