L'Unione europea e gli apolidi

Abstract The European Union and Statelessness According to International law, in principle, questions of nationality fall within the domestic jurisdiction of each State. For this reason, it is not surprising that the EU lacks a specific competence for a comprehensive regulation of the legal status of stateless persons. However, it should be noted that the Lisbon treaty provided, in article 67 TFEU, that stateless persons shall be treated as third-country nationals for the purpose of the area of Freedom, Security and Justice. After having investigated the (few) strengths and the (many) weaknesses of the EU’s action with respect to statelessness, this paper concentrates on the prospects of improvement of the legal status of stateless persons. To reach this goal, the regular residence of the stateless person in the territory of a Member State seems to be the basic precondition of EU’s intervention.