Implementing the statelessness provisions in the EU Pact on Migration & Asylum October 2024 In September 2020, the European Commission presented a new Pact on Migration and Asylum setting out a ‘comprehensive approach, bringing together policy in the areas of migration, asylum, integration and border management’. After nearly four years of debate and negotiations, the Pact was adopted by the European Parliament on 10 April 2024, and by the Council on 14 May 2024. A total of 10 legislative acts were adopted, which ‘reform the entire European framework for asylum and migration management’. Member States have two years to put the new laws into practice. The European Commission published a common implementation plan and operational checklist on 12 June 2024 to assist Member States in this process. Member States have until 12 December 2024 to publish their national implementation plans. Statelessness was invisible in the original Pact proposals. In response to this omission, ENS published detailed analysis and recommendations with suggested amendments to protect the rights of stateless applicants and beneficiaries of international protection. We followed this up in June 2023, with updated analysis and recommendations to inform trilogue negotiations. We have engaged extensively with the European Parliament, Council, and Commission throughout the negotiations to address the invisibility of statelessness in the Pact. While the Pact as adopted raises significant concerns1 about the EU’s approach to migration and asylum more broadly, it is welcome that several of our calls to address statelessness were heard and incorporated in the various instruments adopted. These now need to be fully implemented so that statelessness is properly identified, and stateless people’s rights are respected in EU asylum systems. We published our analysis and recommendations for implementation of the Pact provisions on statelessness in May 2024. This second briefing now provides more detail on how to implement the new statelessness provisions and makes recommendations to support this. To be stateless, is to have no nationality. For the more than 10 million stateless people around the world, this can mean denial of many basic rights most people take for granted. In Europe, statelessness affects over half a million people – both recent migrants and those who have lived in the same place for generations. Statelessness is often intertwined with other root causes of forced displacement, such as the persecution of ethnic, religious, or other members of minority groups, armed conflicts, and discrimination. Among the stateless people living in Europe today are individuals who arrived seeking international protection and were either stateless prior to leaving their country of origin or Some of the key concerns raised to date include that the new rules will significantly increase the number of people (including children) subject to detention; that many more people seeking safety will be subject to fasttrack procedures with limited safeguards; that States will be permitted to deviate from minimum legal standards in crisis situations; that the widespread use of the ‘legal fiction of non-entry’ poses significant risks to upholding the rule of law and fundamental rights; and that the ‘safe third country’ concept increases externalisation of Europe’s borders and responsibilities. 1