Court name: Administrative Court of Luxembourg
State: Luxembourg
Date of decision:

The applicant’s application for statelessness status was denied (both in first and second instance) due to a lack of sufficient proof to determine a difficulty in establishing a nationality, paired with a substantial lack of cooperation of the applicant with the authorities. The Court ruled that the applicant, of Kurdish origin, did not provide coherent and sufficient evidence to support his application.

Court name: Swiss Federal Court (BGer)
Date of decision:

The asylum application filed by applicants of unknown nationality of Palestinian origin with Syrians travel documents was rejected and the applicants were temporarily admitted in Switzerland, as the enforcement of removal had proven unreasonable. The refugees submitted a subsequent application for recognition of statelessness, which was approved by the Swiss Federal Court. The Swiss Federal Court assessed the legitimate interest of the request and specified the legal requirements and advantages of being recognised a stateless person, to which temporarily admitted persons would not be entitled.

Court name: Court of The Hague, location Utrecht
Date of decision:

The case concerns the asylum application in the Netherlands of an applicant claiming to be stateless. The court found that the Dutch authorities erred when they assumed the applicant's name, date of birth and nationality, without sufficiently motivating this decision, despite the applicant's consistent statements on statelessness.

Court name: Supreme Court
State: Spain
Date of decision:

The Supreme Court held that an asylum seeker may maintain during the appeal phase the benefits received during the asylum procedure, in particular the right to reside and work in Spain.

Court name: First Instance Court of Athens (single-member)
State: Greece
Date of decision:

The case concerns a stateless adult who was born out of wedlock and who applied to be recognised as a legitimate child of his father. The court found that Greek law was applicable but dismissed the case as inadmissible.

Court name: Raad van State (Council of State)
Date of decision:

In a case concerning a Dutch national associated with ISIS, the Council of State ruled that the decisions from the Dutch authorities to declare the applicant undesirable and to withdraw her Dutch nationality should be annulled on the grounds that they did not sufficiently take into consideration the best interests of her minor children and her right to family life.

Court name: Luxembourg Administrative Court
State: Luxembourg
Date of decision:

The applicants’ request for family reunification was upheld by the Administrative Court of Appeal in Luxembourg. The Court ruled that the appeal was well-founded and that the disputed refusal decision of the Court of first instance must be annulled. The Administrative Court of Appeal underlined that, by rejecting the family reunification application, the Ministry of Immigration and Asylum disproportionately infringed the child’s right to respect for her private and family life in violation of Article 8 of the ECHR and disregarded the best interests of the child, protected by Article 24 of the Charter and Article 5 of Directive 2003/86/EC.

Court name: Austrian Supreme Administrative Court (Verwaltungsgerichtshof, VwGH)
State: Austria
Date of decision:

The case concerns the unlawfulness of the deportation of a mother and her two daughters from Austria to Georgia. A reassessment from the court (at the time of the execution of the deportation) leads to the result that the circumstances in favour of the applicants have changed to such an extent that the deportation must be considered disproportionate.

Court name: The Hague District Court
Date of decision:

The applicant is a Palestinian refugee born in an UNRWA refugee camp in Lebanon. The applicant argues that the Secretary of State failed to acknowledge that he is stateless when applying the exclusion clause of Article 1D of the Refugee Convention. The Hague District Court refers to case law from 2017  which states that statelessness determination is not a requirement during an asylum procedure if it is not essential for the decision on the application.

Court name: Court of Appeal of England and Wales
Date of decision:

A dual British and Pakistani national who was detained in a camp in Syria was deprived of her British nationality in December 2019 on the grounds that this would be conducive to the public good. A copy of the notice of the deprivation was placed on the applicant's file but was not communicated to her at this time. Under regulations made under the British Nationality Act 1981, this was considered to constitute notice. The deprivation of citizenship was only communicated to the applicant when her lawyers contacted the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in September 2020 to ask for assistance with the applicant’s repatriation and were later informed of this decision by the Home Office in October 2020. The applicant applied for judicial review, claiming that the domestic regulation in question and the deprivation decision had no legal effect. The Court of Appeal dismissed the Secretary of State appeal against the High Court decision finding in the applicant's favour. The judgment is currently under appeal before the Supreme Court. 

Court name: Supreme Administrative Court
State: Bulgaria
Date of decision:
Key aspects: Protection

The Supreme Administrative Court (SAC) quashed Decision № 180/30.03.2022 by the Council of Minister which states the following: “Foreign citizens and stateless persons who have fled from Ukraine as a result of the military actions and who have entered and stayed on the territory of the Republic of Bulgaria may receive temporary protection even without their explicit statement and registration to benefit from temporary protection until 15 April 2022”. SAC found that the wording of the Decision is unclear, that no such deadline may be imposed and that temporary protection status may not be assigned automatically (without the consent of the beneficiary). The cassation court which heard the appeal to that judgment upheld this decision with regard to imposing a deadline for temporary protection registration, but held that temporary protection can be assigned automatically. 

Court name: Court of Session (Scotland)
Date of decision:

The case concerns an application for asylum by a Cameroonian national, a single mother with a child born in the UK. The applicant claimed that the child’s father was a German national exercising his EEA treaty rights in the UK, and that the child may accordingly be a British citizen. The Court of Session held that the Upper Tribunal erred in not adjudicating an application for directions filed by the applicant to obtain documents to ascertain the father’s nationality. In respect of the documents required, the court held that there was no duty to enquire on the part of the Secretary of State, to identify and produce appropriate documents. The court also noted that the applicant’s situation as a single mother with a child who would be without family support was a material consideration in assessing her claim for asylum.

Court name: Court of Appeals of Gipuzkoa
State: Spain
Date of decision:

A 7-year-old child arrived in Spain irregularly by boat in April 2018. She was born in Morocco to a Cameroonian mother while they were on a journey to Europe, and due to the circumstances the child’s birth was not registered. Her mother contacted the Cameroonian and Moroccan embassies in Spain, but she never succeeded in registering her birth nor recognising her Cameroonian nor Moroccan nationality. The child was thus stateless, as declared in the first instance judgment and confirmed on appeal. The Provincial Court of Guipúzcoa held that the mother had made a genuine effort to remove all bureaucratic obstacles to have the child’s Cameroonian nationality recognised. The Court held that the safeguard established in the Spanish Civil Code to prevent statelessness of children born in Spain should be applied broadly and by analogy, as this is the only interpretation in compliance with international treaties to which Spain is a party and with the principle of the best interests of the child. Therefore it found that there was a violation of the child's fundamental rights and declared that the child held Spanish nationality and agreed to order the Central Civil Registry to register the birth of the child. 

Court name: The High Court of Justice Queen’s Bench Division Administrative Court
Date of decision:

Two of the applicants, E3 and N3, were deprived of their British citizenship by the defendant, the Secretary of State for the Home Department. Following the determination of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (“SIAC”) in similar cases, the defendant withdrew her deprivation decisions against the applicants, whose citizenship was reinstated. 

During the period of deprivation, the third applicant, ZA, who is the daughter of one of the applicants, was born. The applicants claimed that ZA should be automatically entitled to British citizenship. The court held that the child of a British citizen born during a period in which her father had been deprived of his citizenship (which was later reinstated), was not automatically British at birth, as the decision to reinstate the father’s citizenship did not have retroactive effect.  

Court name: Supreme Court
State: Ireland
Date of decision:

This appeal arose from decisions of first and second respondents to refuse the appellant’s application for an Irish passport on the basis that he is not an Irish citizen. The appellant’s passport application was on grounds of automatic birth right citizenship derived through the residence of his father, an Afghan national, who gave false information on his initial refugee application in the State. The Court of Appeal had decided in favour of the Minister, holding that a declaration of refugee status which is revoked on the basis that the applicant had provided false and misleading information leads to the declaration being void ab initio.

The Supreme Court allowing the appeal, held that while a refugee declaration is ‘‘in force’’ and until such time as it is revoked, it must be regarded as being valid. This was based on the fact that the Minister for Justice has a discretion as to whether or not to revoke and is only required to do so when it is considered appropriate. This discretion would have enabled the Minister for Justice in an appropriate case to consider the effect of a decision to revoke on those who obtained derivative rights prior to revocation. The Court held that residence status conferred by the State on a parent based on false or misleading information could be included for the calculation of the period required to confer an entitlement of citizenship on the appellant.

Court name: UK Supreme Court
Date of decision:

A Nigerian child was unable to apply British citizenship as she could not pay the full fee, fixed at £973 at the time. The UK Supreme Court found that setting high and unaffordable fees for registration as a British citizen is not unlawful, even though it acknowledged that for many young people the current level of fees is unaffordable and that the inability to acquire British citizenship may result in difficulties for young people. However, the Supreme Court found that the UK Parliament had empowered the Secretary of State to set such fees at a level exceeding the cost of processing a citizenship application and therefore setting such high fees was not unlawful.