According to UNHCR, around 12 million people still continue to be denied the right to nationality, and the persistence of "legal ghosts" is likely to be the case on the long run. The article aims at drawing a picture on the legal status and protection of stateless persons, granted principally by public international law and partly, indirectly the law of the European Union. It sheds light to the rather sporadic but noteworthy developments in international law after the adoption of the 1954 New York Convention, then examines the added value of the EU legal order, even if the Community legislator only treated the stateless in an indirect manner. It concludes that the EU law is an extra but thin layer on the international legal framework protecting stateless persons; thus the EU should make steps, using the new legal basis in the Treaty of Lisbon, so as to strengthen the status of these "legal ghosts".

EU law development of the protection regime Stateless persons public international law

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