Article 17 Wage-earning employment 1. The Contracting States shall accord to stateless persons lawfully staying in their territory treatment as favourable as possible and, in any event, not less favourable than that accorded to aliens generally in the same circumstances, as regards the right to engage in wage-earning employment. 2. The Contracting States shall give sympathetic consideration to assimilating the rights of all stateless persons with regard to wage-earning employment to those of nationals, and in particular of those stateless persons who have entered their territory pursuant to programmes of labour recruitment or under immigration schemes. 1. The Ad Hoc Committee suggested to apply to stateless persons only the first paragraph of the relevant article of the Refugee Convention. In the conference the opposition to this Article (which provided, as did Article 15 of the Refugee Convention, for the “most favourable treatment”) was based on the same grounds as explained with reference to Article 15 above. There was also objection to the two other paragraphs of Article 17 of the Refugee Convention, particularly on the part of the French representative, who claimed that France could not accept them in her concern to protect the labouring masses and in view of existing French law. In general, a number of speakers (including the Swedish, Swiss, British, Belgian, French representatives) expressed the view that their governments would have to enter a reservation to Article 17, paragraph 1, in order to protect their nationals. The Turkish representative even suggested, in view of the reservations made to Article 17 of the Refugee Convention, to consider whether Article 17 should be included at all in the new instrument. 141 The Turkish representative suggested to insert after the words “to nationals of a foreign country” the words “or at least that accorded in the same circumstances, to foreigners in general” and the Belgian repeated his amendment to Article 15. The Belgian amendment was adopted. Since paragraphs 2 and 3 of the respective Article of the Refugee Convention did not appear in the Draft Protocol, the representative of Great Britain formally proposed to include paragraph 3 (now appearing as paragraph 2), contending that only paragraph 2 was the subject of reservation, while paragraph 3 would be merely a recommendation to states to accord the best possible treatment to stateless persons and would not bind them in any way. The inclusion of the second paragraph of Article 17 of the Refugee Convention (with a five-year period instead of three years) was proposed by the German representative and was supported by the British representative, but opposed by others, in part because the five-year period was too long, and in part because, under paragraph 1 as amended, stateless persons would enjoy the same treatment as foreigners in general. The German amendment (together with the proposal to include paragraph 2) was rejected and the British proposal to include paragraph 3 was adopted. The whole Article was adopted by 17 votes to none, with 1 abstention. 142 2. As in the case of Article 15, this Convention provides fewer rights to stateless persons than the Refugee Convention accords. 3. Article 17 is as such one of the most important in the Convention, possibly the most important, since without the right to work all other provisions are practically meaningless. Paragraph 1 is in its application exactly the same as Article 15. All the elements involved 143 were discussed in the comments to that article. For the significance of “in the same circumstances”, see Article 6. 141 E/CONF.17/L.7. 142 SR.7, pp. 8-10; SR.9, pp. 9-12. 143 In the Refugee Conference, para. 1 was considered by Australia and Canada insufficient to meet the conditions of