European Parliament report prioritises our recommendations in its annual report on fundamental rights, calling for a comprehensive strategy on statelessness.
Since launching our #StatelessJourneys campaign in October 2022, we’ve been working hard to get statelessness higher up the EU agenda and have seen some welcome progress.
Our campaign statement highlighted the need for a Europe-wide strategy to address statelessness. Urgent reform is needed to identify and protect stateless migrants and refugees, and prevent children growing up without a nationality.
So, we’re delighted to see that the European Parliament has made these calls to the European Commission and Member States in its ‘Annual Report on the Situation of Fundamental Rights in the European Union – 2022 and 2023’.
The Report, ‘Notes, with concern, the large population of stateless persons in the EU, especially children being born stateless; calls on the Commission to develop a comprehensive strategy and action plan to address statelessness in the EU and to protect them from expulsion; calls on the Member States to properly identify, recognise and protect stateless people, addressing the specific vulnerabilities of stateless persons.’
Over the last 15 months we’ve been making the case for this to MEPs at numerous meetings and events. This has included a campaign launch event in Brussels, a visit to the European Parliament in Strasbourg with two stateless changemakers, Lynn and Armando, for a series of advocacy meetings, and a regional statelessness conference in Madrid where LIBE Chair, Juan Fernando Lopez Aguilar MEP was one of the keynote speakers. The message from all these events was clear, by working together with a strong multistakeholder approach we can make a difference.
As urged by the Parliament, it is now critical that the European Commission takes action to put in place a strategy and action plan to address statelessness in the EU.
We and our partners stand ready to support the development and implementation of an action plan. This needs to happen urgently so that recent progress turns into lasting reform to end statelessness. It is time to address this fundamental human rights issue, which has for too long been on the periphery of EU policymaking.