Why Union Law Can And Should Protect Stateless Persons
117
other cases there might be more appropriate solutions for residence available
abroad.60
At present, the Member States of the European Union are largely failing to
provide comprehensive protection to stateless persons. First, only seven EU
Member States have dedicated statelessness determination procedures, namely France, Italy, Spain, Hungary, the United Kingdom, Latvia and Slovakia.61 In
other Member States, formal determinations of statelessness are either impossible or happen sporadically and ineffectively.62 Moreover, existing statelessness determination procedures are critiqued for lack of procedural guarantees,
administrative and practical impediments in access to the procedure, poor
coordination with asylum procedures, a lack of clarity regarding rules on evidence and interpretations of the definition of stateless person which deviate
from UNHCR guidelines.63 This endangers the proper implementation of the
1954 Convention, and may also lead to violations of the 1961 Convention. Even
though UNHCR has emphasised that the obligation to establish an adequate
status determination procedure is implied in the Conventions, and has issued
60
U NHCR, Handbook on the Protection of Stateless Persons (Geneva, UNHCR, 2014),
pp. 54–55.
61 See European Network on Statelessness (ENS), Statelessness Determination and the
Protection Status of Stateless Persons: A summary guide of good practices and factors to
consider when designing national determination and protection mechanisms (London,
ENS, 2013), p. 9. In addition, Belgium does not have a dedicated determination procedure,
but the establishment of the statelessness status can take place in courts, see UNHCR,
Mapping Statelessness in Belgium (Geneva, UNHCR, 2012), pp. 47–63.
62 See Batchelor, C., ‘The 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons:
Implementation Within the European Union Member States and Recommendations
for Harmonization’, 22(2) Refuge (2005) 31–58; Swider, K., Statelessness Determination
in the Netherlands, Research Paper No. 2014–04 (Amsterdam, Centre for European Law
and Governance, 2014), accessible on SSRN at http://ssrn.com/abstract=2434573; UNCHR,
Mapping Statelessness in the Netherlands (Geneva, UNHCR, 2011), pp. 33; UNHCR, Mapping
Statelessness in Malta (Geneva, UNHCR, 2014), pp. 46–56; UNHCR, Mapping Statelessness
in Belgium (Geneva, UNHCR, 2012), p. 17.
63 See in general Bittoni, G., ‘Statelessness in the European Union’, 19 Tilburg Law Review:
Global Law Special Issue—Statelessness (2014) 52–63. Also see Groot, G.R. de, K. Swider,
O. Vonk, Practices and Approaches in EU Member States to Prevent and End Statelessness,
Study for the LIBE Committee, Nov. 2015, (Brussels, European Parliament, 2015), pp. 48–
51. On the French determination procedure specifically, see Chassin, C.-A., ‘Panorama
français du droit de l’apatridie’, 2 Revue française de droit administratif (2003) 324–330;
Likibi, R., Le droit de l’apatridie: pratiques et controverses (Paris, Publibook, 2013),
pp. 257–303.
European Journal of Migration and Law 19 (2017) 101–135