divorced in 1993 and in 2000, the paternity of the Swedish father of the child was annulled by a District Court. The Swedish Tax Agency had concluded that the child had acquired British nationality from the mother in accordance with UK nationality law (a child who is born outside the UK acquires British nationality if the mother is a British national and was born in the UK). Consequently, the Swedish Tax Agency changed the nationality of the child to “British” in the Population Register in 2002. The mother of the child appealed the decision of the Swedish Tax Agency to the County Administrative Court. The County Administrative Court ruled that when Swedish nationality is acquired from a Swedish father who is married to the child’s mother (according to Section 1(3) of the Act on Swedish Citizenship valid at that time) and when the paternity is annulled later on, the annulment has a retroactive effect, meaning that the child had not in fact acquired Swedish nationality in accordance with Section 1 of the Act on Swedish Citizenship. The appeal was therefore rejected. The mother appealed the decision further to the Administrative Court of Appeal, arguing that the child had grown up in Sweden and that the paternity dispute between the parents should not lead to the loss of the child’s nationality. The Swedish Tax Agency disputed the appeal, stating that the child had never acquired Swedish nationality. The Administrative Court of Appeal rejected the appeal and reminded the applicant that the child could acquire Swedish nationality through notification or application. The mother appealed the decision to the Supreme Administrative Court, requesting the registration of the child’s nationality in the Population Register to be changed back to Swedish. The Swedish Tax Agency disputed the appeal again, pointing out inter alia that the registration in the Population Register of Swedish nationality is not a decision about nationality and does not mean, if the registration was based on incorrect assessment, acquisition of nationality. If the paternity of a father through whom the child has acquired Swedish nationality is annulled, the child is considered afterwards as never having acquired Swedish nationality. The Swedish Tax Agency argued that changes in this application of law should happen through legislation and not through a judgment in a Population Registration case. The Supreme Administrative Court stated that the question in the case was whether the change of the registration of the child’s nationality from Swedish to British by the Swedish Tax Agency was correct or not. The Court referred to Chapter 2, Section 7 of the Instrument of Government and to Section 14 of the Act on Swedish Citizenship, which regulates the situations in which Swedish nationality can be lost (as discussed above). The Court stated that Section 14 does not apply in the present case and that the national legislation does not provide a direct answer to the question. The Court therefore also referred to the ECN and its provisions on deprivation of nationality and concluded that deprivation of nationality due to annulment of paternity, which had been the basis of acquisition of nationality, was not in violation of the provisions of the Convention unless the child were to become stateless as a consequence of the loss of nationality (Article 7 (1)(f) in combination with Article 7(3) of the ECN). The Court concluded that in the absence of specific legal regulations regarding the matter, the question needed to be solved in light of the general principles of law and in particular in light of Chapter 2, Section 7 of the Instrument of Government. It stated that the Instrument of Government excludes, in principle, any form of deprivation of nationality other than the one provided for in law. This means that for instance a decision on nationality cannot be revoked if it has been based on incorrect information because this ground is not mentioned in Swedish law as a ground for loss or deprivation of nationality. In accordance with the Instrument of Government, it is not possible for Swedish nationality to be lost on the basis of an argument that the nationality was never acquired. The Court therefore concluded that the paternity annulment decision did not mean that the child lost his Swedish nationality and that consequently, the Swedish Tax Agency’s change of the registration of the child’s nationality was incorrect. Article 7(1) of the 1961 Convention generally prevents States Parties from permitting renunciation of nationality “unless the person concerned possesses or acquires another nationality.” Article 7(2) contains a similar safeguard against statelessness, applicable in situations where the person concerned is seeking naturalization in a foreign country, and Article 7(3) prohibits loss of nationality if the person would become 68 M A P P I N G S TAT E L E S S N E S S I N S W E D E N