THEMATIC BRIEFING: October 2025 Statelessness determination and protection in Europe: good practice, challenges and risks An effective statelessness determination procedure 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 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 a dedicated procedure to determine statelessness are analysed in Section 3.3. 3.2. Definition of a stateless person recommended Best practice • The definition of a stateless person and the exclusion provisions align with the 1954 Convention. Article 1(1) of the 1954 Convention, which stipulates that a person is stateless if they are ‘not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law’ is binding on all States parties and is deemed part of customary international law.18 UNHCR has published extensive guidance on the interpretation of this definition, including that an assessment of statelessness should be a ‘mixed question of fact and law’.19 This means that the assessment should examine both the letter of the law and factual circumstances, including how the competent authorities apply the law in practice. General principles of international law establish that it is for each State to determine who are its nationals.20 The use of the term ‘de facto stateless’, to describe a person who should be considered a national in accordance with a State’s law but is not in practice recognised as a national under the operation of that law, is not defined in international law and should not be relevant for the purposes of determining whether a person is stateless under the 1954 Convention, which should only be carried out by reference to the definition in Article 1 of the 1954 Convention. Determining that someone is ‘de facto’ rather than ‘de jure’ stateless risks permitting States to avoid their obligations towards stateless people by wrongfully excluding them from the protection of the 1954 Convention. 21 In fact, many situations which may be described as ‘de facto statelessness’ fall within the scope of the 1954 Convention where individuals are not considered nationals of a State under the operation of its laws. As UNHCR has clarified, ‘it is the subjective position of the other State that is critical in determining whether an individual is its national for the purposes of the stateless person definition’.22 France, Greece, Kosovo, Moldova, Portugal, and Ukraine have incorporated a definition of a stateless person in national law that is in line with the 1954 Convention. Other countries, including Belgium and Italy, have not defined the meaning of a stateless person in law, but the 1954 Convention has direct effect, so this applies in domestic law. Good Practice: incorporation of the 1954 Convention definition in French law French law explicitly refers to the 1954 Convention definition, establishing that statelessness is recognised for any person who meets the definition in Article 1 of the 1954 Convention and that the provisions of the Convention govern their treatment. 7