wording of Article 41 of the Charter.50 Based on this clear link, the concrete standards emanating from Article 41 can be relied on when interpreting the right to good administration in national procedures, even if they do not provide the direct legal grounds thereof. In conclusion, based on the proviso that when ensuring children’s access to nationality at birth, in order to avoid statelessness, Member States act in the scope of EU law,51 the right to good administration, as a general principle of EU law must be observed. IV. THE NATIONALITY OF REFUGEE CHILDREN – SPECIFIC CHALLENGES As the above summary indicates, a number of concrete international legal provisions are in place to make sure that no child is born or remains stateless in the EU. Unfortunately, these rules too often remain ineffective in practice, for a number of reasons, for instance: »» Several Member States have neither ratified the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, nor are they party to the 1997 European Convention on Nationality. These countries are not confronted with specific, detailed international standards with regard to the focus issue. »» While there has been promising jurisprudence from the ECHR and the CJEU, these judgments are yet far from providing definitive guidance for State action with regard to the prevention of statelessness at birth. »» Safeguards in domestic legislation are often incomplete and/or not properly applied in practice. The European Network on Statelessness found 13 EU Member States in 2015 that only provided partial safeguards against statelessness at birth, while two Member States had no or only minimal safeguards in their law. The same study found 11 Member States in breach of their relevant international obligations.52 »» Practices related to the establishment of nationality at birth in case of children born to non-nationals are inconsistent and lack any sort of harmonisation throughout the Union. In certain Member States (such as Italy or Romania), state authorities automatically attribute the parents’ nationality (or the nationality indicated by the parents) to the baby on birth certificates. Birth certificates often serve as the primary source of data for other official documents issued later, this practice may give the false impression that the nationality status of the child is properly determined and that statelessness was effectively avoided. In other countries (like Hungary), children born to non-nationals are automatically registered as of ‘unknown nationality’. This may be a legally correct statement at birth, but it can easily become a source of hardship, legal limbo and human rights violations if it persists for several years.53 In other states (like France, the United Kingdom or the Czech Republic), no information concerning nationality is entered on the birth certificate. What is often missing, under all these scenarios, is the proper and timely determination of what the child’s actual nationality is, which process could also allow for a conclusion of statelessness, and thus the application of the safeguards applicable for ‘otherwise stateless’ children, if the conditions are met. These factors explain why child statelessness is still prevalent in the EU. In this context, children born to refugees54 should be considered particularly vulnerable and exposed to a risk of statelessness. Children born to migrant parents can usually be registered with the consular authorities of the parents’ country of nationality, and thus – if the jus sanguinis rule applies – can both acquire the parents’ nationality and a documentary proof thereof. At the same time, refugees and other forced migrants cannot, as a general rule, contact the authorities of their country of origin. This would put them at risk of persecution, and could even cost them their refugee status, as host countries often see such an act as a proof of an unfounded protection claim. As a consequence, in the absence of a general jus soli provision in the host country (as it is the case in all EU Member States) refugee children’s nationality may often remain uncertain. Two scenarios need to be distinguished in this respect: 50 51 52 53 54 Explanations relating to the Charter of Fundamental Rights, 2007/C 303/02, 14 December 2007, Explanation on Article 41 (including a selection of relevant CJEU judgments). See various arguments supporting this interpretation in this section. Only partial safeguard: Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia and Sweden; No or minimal safeguard: Cyprus and Romania; Member States in breach of their international obligations: Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Romania and Sweden – European Network on Statelessness, No Child Should be Stateless, September 2015, http://www.refworld.org/docid/5729b6d54.html. The UNHCR suggests that no child should live with an undetermined nationality for more than 5 years – UNHCR, Guidelines on Statelessness No. 4: Ensuring Every Child’s Right to Acquire a Nationality through Articles 1-4 of the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness (2012), Para. 22, http://www.refworld.org/docid/50d460c72.html. The term ‘refugee’ for the purposes of this publication is used in a broader interpretation and includes other beneficiaries of international protection in a refugee-like situation in the EU, such as beneficiaries of a subsidiary protection status. 10