310
Agata Szwed, Statelessness in the Context of the Migration Crisis in Europe: A Growing...
not contain any statelessness-specific provision, so it can be concluded
that at present the EU does not have an explicit entitlement to adopt legislation or common measures on statelessness as a specific issue.27 Twenty-four Member States are States Parties to the CRSSP and 19 Member
States are States Parties to the CSP − so there is still a problem to achieve uniformity within procedures determining the statelessness status,
especially including specific administrative determination procedures
for stateless persons. Most Member States still lack such procedures.
What is more, national laws often do not provide a direct link between
the determination of statelessness and the issuing of specific residence
permits, which generates a huge problem for legal stay in the country of
residence.28
4 Right to nationality in the nationality laws of Syria, Iraq and
Afghanistan
To understand why statelessness is a growing problem for the European and international community, it is important to understand the
nationality laws of the countries of origin of the largest influx of migrants
coming to Europe since 2015. Although most of these people can prove
their identity, there is still an essential number of those for whom this
is difficult. In the era of refugee crisis, the largest numbers of applications for international protection in the EU have been made by citizens of
Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq − a total of over a million people.29 As people
of these nationalities represent the overwhelming majority of migrants,
in the context of the right to citizenship, the examination of national law
in this paper will focus exclusively on these three national legal systems.
The Syrian nationality law regulates the right to nationality through the 1969 Legislative Decree 276.30 The situations where a person is
treated as a Syrian ipso facto are given in Article 3 of this decree: fi rst of
all, Syrian national law relies on paternal ius sanguinis (only a Syrian
man has the right to automatically pass on his nationality to children);
secondly, in the case of an unknown father (or both parents), Syrian citizenship can be established only for those children who were born inside
the country. The following articles deal with aspects of naturalisation
27
Gabor Gyulai, ‘Statelessness in the EU Framework for International Protection’ (2012) 14
European Journal of Migration and Law 284.
28
European Commission, ‘European Migration Network Inform − Statelessness in the EU’
(2016) 2-3 available at <https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/sites/homeaffairs/files/00_inform_statelessness_final_en.pdf> accessed 22 May 2020.
29
European Parliament, ‘Migration and Asylum’ available at <www.europarl.europa.eu/
thinktank/infographics/migration/public/index.html?page=intro> accessed 22 May 2020.
30
Legislative Decree 276 − Nationality Law, 24 November 1969 (Syrian Nationality Law)
available at <www.refworld.org/docid/4d81e7b12.html> accessed 22 May 2020.