Statelessness Working Paper Series No. 2017/08 The Parliamentary Assembly of the CoE currently consists of 648 members (324 representatives and 324 substitutes) elected by the national parliaments. Often, new incentives appear in a recommendation adopted by the Parliamentary Assembly.80 Recommendations of the Parliamentary Assembly contain proposals addressed to the Committee of Ministers. The Committee may accept, reject or modify the Assembly’s proposals. On the other hand, resolutions embody decisions of the Parliamentary Assembly on questions which it is empowered to put into effect, or expressions of view for which it alone is responsible.81 For harmonised SDPs, both a Parliamentary Assembly recommendation and a resolution might be suitable. The Committee of Ministers is the decision-making organ which acts on behalf of the CoE.82 Each member State delegates its minister responsible for foreign policy (or, as in practice, a substitute) to it. The Committee of Ministers adopts recommendations which constitute an important point of reference for national legislators and administrative authorities.83 For the adoption of a recommendation, the CoE Statute requires a two-thirds majority of the representatives casting a vote and a majority of all representatives in the Committee of Ministers.84 A Committee of Ministers recommendation is the highest level soft law tool. 4. Evaluation: which legal instrument is the most feasible and why? While remaining idealistic in our objectives, realism is also important while selecting the most feasible tool to encourage (or oblige) states to adopt statelessness determination procedures. As mentioned before, one of the most prominent candidates for this task is a European Union directive on the protection of stateless persons to be adopted under the common immigration policy of the EU, on the basis of TFEU 79(2). This solution is backed by academics and experts EU-wide, and the recently registered Minority SafePack initiative might hold promising developments for the future. Today, however, there is great pressure on the EU to regulate asylum and other protection statuses. This situation has resulted in legislative fatigue concerning migration law, and has contributed to a less favourable political environment for the adoption of an EU directive on statelessness.85 The author argues that, at this point, the adoption of a legally binding instrument on the EU level is unlikely, as Member States might be reluctant to adopt further enforceable norms concerning migration. The idea of enforceability might render efforts towards harmonisation counter-productive. At the same time, more and more members of the Council of Europe acknowledge the need to establish statelessness determination procedures. The CoE consists of 47 member States, of which nine86 have established statelessness determination procedures, while others address statelessness in a different manner that is not widely accepted as an SDP per se (for example, Switzerland).87 This constitutes a 80 Jörg Polakewicz, ‘Council of Europe (CoE)’, in Rüdiger Wolfrum (ed.), The Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014, para. 17. 81 Council of Europe, ‘Parliamentary Assembly’, available at: http://www.coe.int/en/web/tbilisi/parliamentaryassembly [accessed 12 September 2017] 82 Jörg Polakewicz, ‘Council of Europe (CoE)’, in Rüdiger Wolfrum (ed.), The Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014, para. 17. 83 Ibid. 84 Ibid, para. 19. 85 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. 26. Available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2823627 [accessed 18 April 2017] 86 10 European states excluding Kosovo. 87 Karen Hamann, ‘Statelessness determination: the Swiss experience’, Forced Migration Review 54, February 2017, pp. 96-98. 15