THEMATIC BRIEFING: October 2025 Statelessness determination and protection in Europe: good practice, challenges and risks 4.2. Improving awareness and identification of statelessness To improve the identification of statelessness and referral to SDPs to enable States to comply with their international obligations, frontline officials must be trained to identify and record statelessness and make appropriate referrals to relevant procedures.77 Asylum, immigration, civil registry, and other public officials often lack the awareness, information, and capacity needed to identify statelessness and take appropriate action. If statelessness is missed or nationality is mis-recorded, it can present obstacles and barriers that later lead to human rights violations. States are therefore recommended to cooperate with statelessness experts, such as ENS, UNHCR,78 stateless-led organisations, community representatives, and regional institutions such as the EU and Council of Europe to provide adequate training and resources on statelessness, ensure country of origin information contains information about statelessness and risks of statelessness as well as nationality laws and civil registration law, policy, and practice, and international standards for relevant officials and wider dissemination. 4.3. Addressing the ‘Pull factor’ myth Evidence from countries with procedures to determine statelessness shows no correlation between the number of people entering the country and the introduction of such a procedure. The numbers of people applying to SDPs in Europe remains relatively low.79 Where no procedure is in place or when it does not lead to a protection status, stateless people are often stuck in limbo, subject to detention and failed removal attempts, with no way to regularise their stay and nowhere to go. Consequently, many face grave violations of their rights, and public authorities are faced with significant costs and wasted resources. The introduction of an SDP provides a framework for States to determine a person’s nationality status with two possible outcomes: either the person is recognised as stateless and granted the protection they are entitled to under international law, or they are recognised to be a national of another State, issued documentation and may then leave the country. Either way, introducing an SDP not only ensures that stateless people can access their rights and contribute to the societies in which they live, but assists States to find solutions for people who would otherwise remain irregularly on the margins of society, unable to either contribute or leave the country. It is also important to note that SDPs require the cooperation of the applicant, who must submit information about their circumstances, seek information from the authorities of countries with which they have links, and potentially attend interviews with consular authorities. It is therefore very unlikely that a person who does not have a compelling reason to believe they are stateless would apply for statelessness status. 4.4. Reducing statelessness in situ As noted in the Introduction, SDPs are not an appropriate solution to resolve situations of in situ statelessness where the stateless individual (or group) is a long-term resident or was born in the country and has no substantive links to another country.80 To reduce situations of in situ statelessness, States should endeavour to implement measures such as restoring or granting nationality to affected individuals or groups, revising legal frameworks to remove any discriminatory provisions or practices that may lead to new cases of statelessness, and other targeted measures to ensure compliance with international norms and good practice.81 To ensure that stateless people who may have an entitlement to nationality are identified and appropriately referred, SDPs should include a mechanism to refer people who may in fact be stateless in situ to a procedure to confirm their nationality. 29