Fees, nationality and language tests, and income requirements To facilitate naturalisation, stateless people should be exempted from requirements such as nationality or integration tests, language testing, application fees, or minimum income requirements for naturalisation. In most countries, naturalisation fees apply. In some, they are under 100 EUR (e.g. Albania, Bulgaria, France, Latvia, Moldova and Switzerland), but in others they are much more. The naturalisation fees are prohibitively high in countries such as the United Kingdom, with each adult application costing the equivalent of over 2,000 EUR. In Austria, the fees are between 1,300-2,600 EUR, and in the Netherlands, the reduced fee for stateless people and refugees is 760 EUR. Some countries reduce the fee for children, but Georgia is the only Index country that offers a specific fee exemption for stateless people. Stateless people are very rarely exempted from language, citizenship, or integration tests, except in Albania and Montenegro where they are exempt from some requirements such as income, language, and property ownership. Some countries exempt stateless people from providing certain documentation (e.g. Türkiye and Ukraine), but not from eligibility criteria. In Georgia, adult stateless people are not exempted from naturalisation requirements such as the language, history, and legal system test, but some exemptions apply to stateless children and children with refugee status. Some countries also apply a minimum income requirement, or require that the applicant is not dependant on social security. There are additional barriers related to the documentation required in some countries, e.g. in the Netherlands stateless people are exempt from providing a passport, but they must still provide a birth certificate. ‘Good character’ and previous criminal convictions requirements In most countries, applicants must not have criminal convictions and should not pose a threat to national security (e.g. in Albania, Georgia, Hungary, Montenegro, Türkiye). In two Index countries, applicants must also not have any pending criminal proceedings (Hungary and Kosovo). However, best practice recommends that previous criminal convictions or 'good character' requirements do not unreasonably prevent stateless people from naturalising. Some countries apply discretionary ‘good character’ requirements that are not based on criminal convictions and may unduly prevent stateless people from acquiring a nationality. For example, in the United Kingdom, the 'good character' requirement is discretionary and includes having 'reasonable grounds to suspect they have been involved in a crime', and in France the prefecture conducts an inquiry to check the applicant’s civic conduct (including their tax records). In the landmark JY case in 2022, the CJEU ruled that Austria must conduct a proportionality assessment before revoking an assurance of nationality, even if the applicant commits minor offences (such as road traffic offences), a ruling that also applies to other EU Member States. 60 3.10. Trends in countries without a dedicated protection status 20 of the 34 countries in the Statelessness Index do not have a dedicated protection status for stateless people, even if they have a procedure to determine statelessness. 61 18 of these 20 are party to the 1954 Convention62 but have not yet introduced an effective mechanism through which to identify stateless people on their territory, or to effectively grant them rights and protection on the basis of statelessness in line with their obligations under the Convention. Some Index countries have recently taken steps towards introducing SDPs. For example, since acceding to the 1954 Convention in 2019, Malta has been discussing the establishment of an SDP with UNHCR and civil society experts. During the Global Refugee Forum in December 2019, Portugal pledged to ‘establish mechanisms to identify, protect, prevent and reduce statelessness ‘and to ‘provide for the issuance of Convention travel documents for refugees and stateless persons according to international standards’. 63 In 2023, it adopted a law establishing that stateless people are entitled to statelessness status and Parliament is developing bylaws to operationalise the procedure. There have also been discussions in Ireland, but these