Court name: Court of Justice of the European Union
Date of decision:

The authorities refused to examine the applications of Dutch nationals, with dual nationality of a non-EU country, for renewal of their Dutch passports. The decision was based on the fact that they had lost their Dutch nationality because they possessed a foreign nationality and had their principal residence for an uninterrupted period of 10 years outside the Netherlands and the EU. The CJEU found that Member States may lay down rules regulating the loss of their nationality and, as a result, the loss of EU citizenship, where the genuine link between the person and that State is durably interrupted. Nevertheless, the loss of nationality must respect the principle of proportionality, which requires an individual assessment of the consequences of that loss for the person from the point of view of EU law.

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

The applicant received asylum status as a stateless Palestinian, but his request to register his statelessness in the municipal civil records was rejected due to lack of evidence. He has an original UNRWA document and an ID from Lebanon, but they were considered insufficient proof of identity as well as of statelessness. The applicant complained that inability to affirm his statelessness violates his identity rights under article 8 ECHR, as well as his rights as a stateless person under EU law, both of which arguments didn't succeed.