The case was brought to the Supreme Court by 16 individuals who are descendants of a Cypriot citizen and a Turkish citizen, claiming that they applied to register as citizens of Cyprus but never received a response from the authorities. They argued that they are stateless and that Cyprus failed to grant them Cypriot citizenship. The Supreme Court noted the adverse consequences of statelessness, referring to jurisprudence of the ECtHR, but found that all but one applicant are Turkish citizens. For all applicants, the Court concluded that the authorities’ failure to respond to the citizenship applications fell under the jurisdiction of the Administrative Court, and thus rejected the applications.
The court stated that “not admitting applicants for statelessness status to an asylum seekers' accommodation centre is an unlawful action” and the applicants should be admitted to an accommodation centre until a decision is made on their applications for recognition as a stateless person. The case was argued based on an analogy with the asylum procedure, as the reference to stateless persons is currently in the Czech Asylum Act.
The applicant is a stateless Palestinian from Lebanon, who was denied statelessness status recognition as he was found to fall under the exclusion grounds of the 1954 Convention, even after leaving the territory under UNRWA mandate.
The judgment relies on earlier Constitutional Court judgments that have established that stateless persons who lost their nationality involuntarily and demonstrated that they do not have the right to permanent legal residence elsewhere should get residence rights in Belgium on an equal footing with refugees, and that the necessary national legislation is lacking to give effect to such rights. The applicant has a criminal record and was denied residence rights on that basis, but the Court ruled that criminal convictions are irrelevant for his residence rights, and ordered authorities to regularise his residence until new legislation comes to force that regulates the stateless persons' right to residence.
Request to have nationality changed from "unknown" to "stateless" denied, as it cannot be ruled out that the applicant's father has Macedonian nationality. Applicant did not provide enough evidence to determine statelessness.
An appeal as to whether the Secretary of State was precluded under the British Nationality Act 1981 from making an order depriving the appellant of British citizenship because to do so would render him stateless.
The case concerns a Saharawi woman who was not recognised as a stateless person by the Ministry of Interior, in a decision which was later upheld by the High Court. The Supreme Court overturned both the lower decisions.