Statelessness Working Paper Series 2017/04 several human rights treaties and discriminatory. In its ruling, the Constitutional Court judged the differentiated treatment ensuing from the provision to have a reasonable justification in light of the general interest and therefore found the refusal to grant nationality automatically to children concerned by the provision not arbitrary. It further added that Article 10(2) BNC being an exception to the rule, it must therefore be interpreted restrictively, with due regard to the aim of the legislator, to avoid abuses of such provisions.51 Therefore, the provision shall not apply when it is impossible for the parents to approach the diplomatic or consular authorities of their country of origin. The third judgment dealing with Article 10 BNC predates the introduction of the exception clause but is nonetheless relevant in situations where Article 10(2) BNC would not apply. The Court of Appeal of Brussels confirmed that the municipality cannot add additional requirements to the granting of Belgian nationality on basis of Article 10(1) BNC that were not envisaged by the legislator.52 In the present case, the municipality of Saint-Gilles had required a proof of stateless status delivered by the Court in order to grant Belgian nationality to the child. The Court ruled that said proof cannot be requested by the municipality. However, the application of this judgment by other municipalities in practice is unknown. Municipalities are responsible for the application of Article 10(1) and thus for the statelessness assessment, according to this judgment, an official proof of statelessness through the stateless determination procedure cannot be required for the child in order for him or her to be granted Belgian nationality, simplifying the acquisition of Belgian nationality of children who would otherwise be stateless. Another case not ruled by Belgian national courts but brought before the European Court of Justice (ECJ) also shed light on the implications of Article 10 BNC: The case Zambrano v. Office National de l'Emploi (ONEm).53 This case is very relevant in the European refugee context as it deals with rights that were granted to parents of a child who had obtained Belgian nationality on the basis of Article 10(1) BNC, whereas the parents’ asylum application had been rejected. Despite the fact that the case deals with acquisition of nationality prior to the introduction of the exception clause under Article 10(2) BNC, the judgment is still relevant. In the case at hand, Colombian parents had had two children on Belgian soil who therefore had acquired Belgian nationality on the basis of Article 10 BNC as the parents had not registered them at the Colombian Embassy. The parents had been required to leave the Belgian territory after their asylum application had been rejected. The ECJ held in the judgment that by becoming Belgian citizens the children had also acquired Union citizenship. The actions of the government should not lead to deprivation of the child of ��the genuine enjoyment of the substantive rights attached to the status of the citizen of the Union” and therefore prevented the parents from being evicted. Furthermore, the ECJ placed an obligation on the Belgian State to provide them with working and residence permits in order to ensure they would not be forced to leave the territory, which would deprive the child of the rights attached to citizenship of the Union.54 The decision in Zambrano is relevant in the current refugee situation as the acquisition by the child of Belgian citizenship is being linked to a right of residence and a right to a work permit for his or her parents holding third-country citizenship. The provision under Article 10 BNC therefore more than 51 Article 10 aims to avoid cases of statelessness while the new provision introduced ( 10(2) BNC) aims at preventing abuses by parents who wish to use the law for another purpose than avoiding statelessness (eg. Not register the child for him or her to be Belgian and therefore try to obtain a right to stay in Belgium for themselves thanks to their child’s Belgian nationality). Therefore, the court did not refer to avoidance of statelessness as an aim of the legislator and therefore a ground for a restrictive interpretation. Rather the restrictive interpretation stems from a general principle of law the new provision being an exception to the rule found in article 10(1) BNC 52 Belgium, Court of First Instance, Brussels, 13 May 2005, unpublished; Belgium, Court of Appeal, Brussels, 3 April 2009, unpublished. 53 Case C-34/09 Gerardo Ruiz Zambrano v. Office national de l’emploi [2011] ECR I-01177. 54 Ibid. 8