Statelessness and the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum May 2024 Regulation on the establishment of Eurodac In Recital 56, the Eurodac Regulation references the 2015 Council Conclusions on Statelessness and recalls the commitment that all Member States have made to accede to the 1954 Convention. Protection gaps and issues requiring further attention Improved provisions in the Pact on identification of statelessness are a critical first step to ensuring that the rights of stateless refugees are protected. However, identification will be ineffective if this does not lead to follow-up action including referral to an adequate procedure to determine statelessness (or nationality) and grant the rights and protections enshrined in the 1954 Convention where an individual is determined to be a stateless person. The outcome of screening is therefore a significant area of concern. It remains unclear what the consequences of the identification of initial indications of statelessness during vulnerability checks under the Screening Regulation will be. If there are no grounds for international protection, a stateless person may not be considered to have entered the territory and may be simultaneously issued a return decision, with no route to a procedure - such as a Statelessness Determination Procedure - to determine whether they are in fact stateless and realise their rights as such. It is also concerning that the ‘safe country of origin’ concept in Article 61(5) APR explicitly includes stateless people to facilitate their return to a country where they were ‘formerly habitually resident’. To implement this provision in line with international law, there would need to be specific safeguards in place to examine in each individual case of a stateless person whether protection can be considered available in a country of former habitual residence in line with UNHCR guidance in this regard. Close monitoring and scrutiny will be needed to ensure that where indications of statelessness are recorded this prevents a return decision or application of the ‘safe country of origin’ concept from being applied pending a full and definitive determination of whether the individual is stateless, consistent with obligations under the 1954 Convention.2 A failure to identify statelessness can put people, including children, at risk and cause serious human rights violations. It can also cause delays to decision-making, errors in data collection, and lead to unlawful detention and futile and costly attempts to enforce return. To resolve this, more EU Member States can adopt dedicated Statelessness Determination Procedures (SDPs). Such procedures already exist in six EU Member States. Other Member States have partial procedures or are in the process of introducing SDPs. In others, it is possible to identify and determine statelessness in the context of other administrative procedures.3 In addition to these fundamental points of concern, there were also missed opportunities to systematically mainstream statelessness as a cross-cutting issue throughout the Pact. The definition of a stateless person and provisions to identify and record (indications of) statelessness were not included in all instruments. In particular, the Eurodac Regulation, which regulates data collection, references ‘nationality or nationalities’ throughout without reference to recording data on statelessness nor providing for mechanisms to harmonise recording of those who lack a nationality or whose nationality is undetermined. 25 of the 27 EU Members States are party to the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons (Poland and Cyprus are not yet signatories). 3 For detailed comparative information on law, policy, and practice relating to statelessness determination in 30 European countries, see ENS’s Statelessness Index. 2