198 Molnár of the then Söderköping Process (now: EU Eastern Partnership Panel on Migration and Asylum),17 presenting her experiences and good practices to Moldova, Ukraine and Belarus. Similarly, Hungary shared her experiences gained in relation to statelessness determination in a side event of the 15th session of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in September 2010 in Geneva.18 Moreover, Hungary, as Presidency of the Council of the EU in the first semester of 2011, put this issue on the European Union policy agenda as well. On her initiative, Member States discussed the issues of prevention and reduction of statelessness, as well as the protection of stateless people at the informal meeting of the Strategic Committee on Frontiers, Immigration and Asylum (SCIFA) of the EU Council in May 2011 in Budapest.19 The Hungarian government thus welcomes as a possible follow-up that at the September 2012 UN High Level Rule of Law Meeting during the General Assembly in New York the EU and the Member States pledged that all Member States not yet parties to the 1954 and 1961 Statelessness Conventions would now ratify these international instruments as well as the EU would develop a framework for raising issues of statelessness with third countries by 2014.20 Even if the EU as an entity does not have competence to adopt uniform EU-legislation on statelessness,21 it can support Member States’, NGOs’ and other stakeholders’ efforts in various other ways. In order to ensure foreseeable and sustainable financing 17 18 19 20 21 For more about this regional consultative process, see <http://eapmigrationpanel.org/>. The summary of the proceedings of this event can also be downloaded from here. Side event to the 15th Session of the Human Rights Council on Statelessness, Discrimi­ nation and Human Rights; co-organised by Equal Rights Trust and The International Commission of Jurists, Geneva, 29 September 2010. For more information on this meeting as well as the discussion paper on the prevention and reduction of statelessness and on the protection of stateless persons, see <http://www .eu2011.hu/event/informal-scifa-strategic-committee-immigration-frontiers-and-asylum -meeting> accessed 15 September 2013. ‘Pledges of the European Union and its Member States to be made on the occasion of the forthcoming High-Level Meeting on the Rule of Law of 24 September 2012’ (19 September 2012), Section A. (Strengthening the rule of law at the international level), point 4 and Section B. (Strengthening the rule of law at the national level), point 3.2. See e.g. Lithuania (having acceded to the 1961 Convention symbolically on 1 July 2013, the date when the country took over the rotating Presidency of the EU Council) or Poland (technical preparations are already underway with a view to acceding to the 1954 Convention). The only, tiny legal basis for EU competence in this field can be found in Article 67(2) TFEU in conjunction with Article 352 TFEU. For more on this issue see Tamás Molnár, ‘Stateless Persons under International Law and EU Law: a Comparative Analysis concerning their Legal Status, with Particular Attention to the Added Value of the EU Legal Order’ (2010) 51 Acta Juridica Hungarica 304. tilburg law review 19 (2014) 194-202