Networking For Change 213 Keywords statelessness in Europe – issue emergence – European Network on Statelessness – international coalition on statelessness – networking – statelessness conventions – accession pledges – eradicating child statelessness – EU citizenship – statelessness determination procedures 1 Introduction Until recently, there was no regional civil society alliance dedicated exclusively to addressing statelessness. This changed with the advent of the European Network on Statelessness (ENS),1 which has attracted fifty NGO members since its public launch in June 2012. This article commences with a brief overview of recent and current statelessness developments in Europe, which is necessary in order to understand the context in which ENS evolved. This is followed by an evaluation of the Network’s achievements to date, including in order to identify useful networking functions that could potentially be exported to other regional contexts. After outlining a number of challenges that remain, the article concludes by considering how the development of an international coalition or campaign would help to secure real progress towards eradicating statelessness. 2 Statelessness in Europe To start with it should be acknowledged that Europe has relatively high accession levels to the two main international instruments governing ­ ­statelessness – namely the 1954 and 1961 Statelessness Conventions.2 This is particularly so with regard to the former with near universal ratification among European Union (EU) Member States3 of this convention which sets down state obligations with regard to stateless persons who have migrated onto their territory. But delve only a little deeper and we see the chasm behind this superficially impressive accession rate – namely that only a handful of European 1 European Network on Statelessness <www.statelessness.eu> accessed 19 August 2013. 2 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons (adopted 28 September 1954, entered into force 6 June 1960) 360 UNTS 117; Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness (adopted 30 August 1961, entered into force 13 December 1975) 989 UNTS 175. 3 The exceptions are Cyprus, Estonia, Malta and Poland. tilburg law review 19 (2014) 212-222