Addressing statelessness in Europe’s refugee response In Greece, all interviewees were able to identify some of the main stateless population profiles, but in some cases lacked detailed understanding, noted a reliance on country of origin information, and raised challenges in identifying less common population groups among applicants from many different countries of origin. The Serbian official noted there was no guidance on statelessness but did not appear to perceive this as an issue: ‘we do everything in accordance with the law’. However, the general lack of information on how statelessness may be impacting on refugees and migrants passing through the country was raised as a challenge: ‘For now, stateless refugees are invisible to us’. (Serbian official) REGIONAL ACTORS Six interviews were carried out with regional actors (European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE), UNHCR, Frontex, EASO, EU Fundamental Rights Agency, and Refugees Ideas and Solutions Europe (RISE)) to better understand their perspective on the nexus between statelessness and forced migration, and seek their views on a regional response, as well as on what further research, advocacy and capacity-building activities should be prioritised. Knowledge of statelessness and nationality issues Knowledge and understanding of statelessness and nationality issues was generally relatively good among the regional actors interviewed, with those working more marginally on statelessness professing to more limited knowledge but still able to articulate how it arose in the context of their work. Several interviewees recognised that there were institutional gaps in knowledge within their own or other regional bodies, and that statelessness had only relatively recently been recognised as of relevance to the refugee response. Even among relatively well-informed individuals, there was a lack of clarity about how best to address statelessness in their work, or whether they were best placed to do so. Knowledge of statelessness tended to be limited to awareness of some of the more common profiles of stateless populations, such as Kuwaiti bidoon, Syrian Kurds, or Palestinians. There was generally less understanding of how and why statelessness may occur in different contexts, or of nationality problems that may impact on smaller groups of people from other countries, their children or spouses. ECRE said statelessness related issues came up most often in the context of their legal work, including regular requests from lawyers for support with advice for stateless people seeking routes to protection. RISE reflected that statelessness was not an issue they had focused on in their work to date, but that it was very relevant and a significant area of concern, describing how nationality issues were impacting on individual refugees across their networks. UNHCR spoke at length about some of the challenges relating to statelessness arising in the Greek migration context and its recent work to raise awareness with government and regional actors on this. EU agencies (Frontex, EASO and FRA) noted key areas where statelessness is relevant to their work, for example in nationality screening procedures, risk analysis, monitoring hotspots, implementing returns, statistical monitoring and reporting, country of origin information provision, as well as integration, and other areas of policy overlap at EU level. Interviewees often noted a knowledge and capacity gap within their own organisations in relation to statelessness and a stated intention and desire to address this. 15