CHAPTER 3 THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE “The price to pay for the perpetuation of statelessness is high not only for the persons affected, but also for the countries in which stateless persons live. Statelessness prevents participation in socioeconomic, but also in public affairs, and results in the alienation of entire groups from society, which is passed on from generation to generation.” – Nils Muižnieks, former CoE Commissioner for Human Rights486 3.1. INTRODUCTION As the above quote of a former Council of Europe (CoE) Commissioner for Human Rights demonstrates, statelessness should be a concern of the 47 countries that are members of this organization for cooperation between states on issues concerning human rights, democracy and the rule of law, even today. The CoE “has been working very actively on questions relating to nationality”487, demonstrating the importance and value of this organization to this study. Different CoE legal instruments explicitly addressing questions relating to nationality and statelessness have been adopted, but people still remain without any nationality today. Th is chapter therefore studies the legal instruments that are available to address the issue: it is dedicated entirely to the CoE and its legal instruments that can contribute to preventing and solving statelessness in Europe. It also considers what these legal instruments on preventing and solving statelessness add to our understanding of the legal concept of nationality. In analyzing the different legal instruments of the CoE, this chapter is mindful of the differences between ‘key’, legally binding instruments and other instruments. This distinction is thus made based on the instruments’ relevance to the prevention and resolution of statelessness, their legal force and importance within the CoE. This allows the chapter to feature those instruments that are key more prominently, in particular in the deeper analysis in section 3.3. 486 487 Nils Muižnieks, ‘Stateless but Not Rightless: Improving the Protection of Stateless Persons in Europe’, Keynote Speech at the Conference organized by UNHCR and ENS in Strasbourg, 8 April 2014, CommDH/Speech(2014)6. Margaret Killerby, ‘Steps Taken by the Council of Europe to Promote the Modernization of the Nationality Laws of European States’ in Síofra O’Leary & Teija Tiilikainen, Citizenship and Nationality Status in the New Europe (Institute for Public Policy Research, Sweet & Maxwell 1998) 21–37, 21. Intersentia 95