BARRIER
Far-reaching grounds to refuse statelessness status in
Bulgaria
As of March 2021, under the amended Bulgarian Law on Foreign Nationals,
statelessness status is refused to people whose identity documents have
expired or who have been issued a removal order for irregular stay. Other
grounds for refusal include lack of means of subsistence and compulsory
insurance or having been convicted of a crime punishable by a sentence of at
least one year.38
3.2.
Key elements of a statelessness determination procedure
There are five key elements that must all be in place for an effective statelessness
determination procedure to be established, access to protection ensured, and
statelessness in the migratory context to be reduced:39
1. Accession to and compliance with relevant international instruments including
the 1954 Convention;
2. Availability of information about the issue of statelessness and capacity of
relevant competent authorities;
3. Effective determination of statelessness;
4. Adequate protection status as a consequence of determination; and
5. Facilitated route to naturalisation resolving statelessness.
International
instruments
Information
and awareness
Statelessness
determination
Protection
status
Access to
nationality
An effective SDP must be accessible to all stateless migrants and refugees on the
territory, must involve a fair and non-discriminatory assessment with procedural
safeguards and rights of appeal, applicants must be granted protection during
the procedure, and must result in a protection status for those determined to be
stateless. This section examines each of these core elements of an SDP in detail,
analysing how the ten countries in the Statelessness Index that have an established
SDP perform against norms and good practice. The protection and rights available to
stateless migrants in countries without an SDP are analysed in Section 3.3.
3.2.1. Access to the procedure
For an SDP to be fair, efficient, and non-discriminatory, it is essential that safeguards
are put in place to ensure the procedure is accessible to all, and bureaucratic hurdles
do not impede access to protection.40 The relevant competent authorities, judiciary,