Statelessness and the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum May 2024 Recommendations for implementation and next steps In light of the above, ENS recommends that: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. The European Commission should include reference to the new statelessness provisions in its common implementation plan signalling to Member States the need to take action to reflect these new provisions in their own national implementation plans. The European Commission, EU Asylum Agency, European Parliament, UNHCR, and other relevant stakeholders should ensure that any monitoring of Pact implementation specifically addresses and assesses how the statelessness provisions are being implemented in practice. The EU Asylum Agency, Member State authorities, and other relevant stakeholders should ensure that all asylum officials and other frontline refugee response actors have access to training on statelessness and tools to support identification, including the EASO Practical Guide on Registration, ENS national toolkits to identify and address statelessness (where available), and other relevant tools. Eurostat, Member State authorities, and other relevant stakeholders should ensure that data collection mechanisms provide for the possibility to identify and record (indications of) statelessness with a separate field for this purpose, as well as to record different nationalities or statelessness for different family members including children. Member States should consider and implement routes to determine statelessness (or nationality) as an outcome of identifying indications of statelessness at screening. As the Asylum Procedures Regulation establishes, the fact that a person may be stateless must be registered pending a determination. Such a determination should be carried out by trained personnel in a dedicated procedure with procedural safeguards at an appropriate juncture in international protection proceedings to protect the confidentiality and primacy of an asylum claim. If it is determined that an individual is stateless, this must be formally recognised to ensure the individual can access the rights and protections enshrined in the 1954 Convention. Member State authorities, and other relevant stakeholders should ensure that statelessness is adequately considered in individual return and detention decisions given that stateless people are very likely to have no country to which they can return. Member States, the European Commission, the EU Asylum Agency, and other relevant stakeholders should engage with and resource statelessness experts, including from civil society and communities affected by statelessness to support effective implementation of the new Pact provisions on statelessness, as well as necessary improvements to national and regional frameworks for the protection of recognised stateless persons. Effective implementation of the new statelessness provisions and improved protection for stateless refugees will require the Commission, EU Agencies, and Member States to work with relevant experts such as UNHCR, ENS, and our members – including stateless individuals and community representatives, and others – to channel necessary expertise into monitoring and implementation. We stand ready to support this process to ensure that this welcome progress on paper turns into action on the ground to improve the lives of stateless refugees and migrants in Europe. For further information please contact: Nina Murray Head of Policy & Research, European Network on Statelessness Nina.murray@statelessness.eu www.statelessness.eu