The most contested Italian citizenship reform in decades has now moved from political debate to constitutional reasoning.
After the press release of 12 March 2026, which had already anticipated the outcome, the Italian Constitutional Court delivered Judgment No. 63/2026 on 30 April 2026, upholding the core of the 2025 reform on Italian citizenship by descent.
The judgment is significant because it moves the debate beyond the political and social controversy surrounding Law No. 74/2025 and explains, in constitutional terms, why the new limits introduced by Parliament have been considered legitimate.
The Court accepts the retroactive effect of the reform, but does not treat it as a revocation of citizenship already recognised. For individuals born abroad who had never obtained formal recognition, citizenship is not regarded as a legally consolidated status capable of preventing later legislative intervention.
This is the central point of the decision.
Italian citizenship by descent has not been abolished, but it has been brought within clearer boundaries. The Court confirms that ancestry alone is no longer sufficient in every case, particularly where the claim is detached from any real connection with Italy.
The Court also rejects the argument based on the loss of EU citizenship, holding that the applicants had never held a recognised status giving rise to exercisable Union citizenship rights.
Further constitutional referrals remain pending, including those raised by the courts of Mantua and Campobasso. Their arguments remain formally open, especially on the absence of a broader transitional period, yet Judgment No. 63/2026 already gives a clear indication of the Court’s direction.
In the article below, I analyse the key points of the judgment, the objections raised by the Court of Turin, the Constitutional Court’s response, and the practical consequences for future citizenship claims.
For many potential Italian citizens by descent, and for many descendants of Italian emigrants around the world, March 2025 marked the beginning of a period of acute uncertainty. The turning point was Decree-Law No. 36/2025, adopted by the Italian Government on grounds of necessity and urgency. Almost overnight, the legal framework governing the recognition of Italian citizenship iure sanguinis changed.
This was not a theoretical shift. It affected people who were already moving through the recognition process in very different positions. Some had spent months, and in some cases years, collecting civil status records, apostilles, legalisations and translations. Some had assembled a full application file but had not yet managed to secure a consular appointment. Others were still at the preliminary stage, trying to understand whether they were eligible and which route they should follow.
For many of them, the reform was not perceived as a gradual policy adjustment. It appeared as an immediate cut-off.
The case referred by the Court of Turin, which led to Judgment No. 63/2026 of the Italian Constitutional Court, captures the issue with particular force. The proceedings concerned eight Venezuelan applicants seeking recognition of Italian citizenship by descent from an Italian ancestor born in Turin in 1837. He later emigrated to Venezuela and, according to the referring court, died there without acquiring Venezuelan citizenship.
Under the previous legal framework, the Court of Turin considered their claim capable of succeeding, despite the presence in the genealogical line of a female ancestor who had given birth before the entry into force of the Italian Constitution in 1948. There was also a further element: other descendants of the same Italian ancestor had already obtained recognition of Italian citizenship before the Court of Rome in 2023.
The claim was therefore not merely speculative. It was based on a family line which had already been judicially examined in another proceeding.
The difficulty was timing.
The Turin applicants filed their judicial claim on 28 March 2025. The new regime preserved judicial applications filed by 11:59 pm, Rome time, on 27 March 2025. Their application was therefore lodged only a few hours too late.
That narrow margin changed everything.
An entire Venezuelan family line fell outside the preserved category and became subject to the new restrictions introduced by Article 3-bis. This is the factual background against which the constitutional challenge must be read.
The Court of Turin asked whether such an abrupt and retroactive restriction was constitutionally permissible. In substance, it questioned whether the reform had deprived individuals of a citizenship status which, under the previous framework, they were deemed to have acquired at birth. It also criticised the absence of a wider transitional period, particularly for those who had not yet managed to commence the administrative or judicial recognition process before the cut-off.
Judgment No. 63/2026 answers those objections in clear terms.
The Constitutional Court accepts that the reform is retroactive. It does not avoid or minimise that issue. However, it refuses to characterise the reform as a revocation of citizenship already acquired and consolidated. For the Court, the decisive point is that the applicants had never obtained formal administrative or judicial recognition of their status. Their position was therefore not equivalent to that of a person whose Italian citizenship had already been legally ascertained.
This distinction is the foundation of the judgment. The decision does not abolish Italian citizenship by descent. It confirms, however, that the previous model of potentially unlimited transmission across generations born abroad has been brought within new legislative boundaries.
The decision does not abolish Italian citizenship by descent. It confirms, however, that the previous model of unlimited transmission across generations born abroad has been brought within new legislative boundaries. The Court reads those boundaries through a broader constitutional idea of citizenship, based on effective membership of a political community, rather than on ancestry alone.
But let us now analyse and better understand the key points of the judgment.
Retroactivity, but not deprivation of citizenship
The first decisive point in Judgment No. 63/2026 concerns retroactivity. The Constitutional Court does not minimise the issue. It expressly acknowledges that Article 3-bis has genuine retroactive effect. In other words, the provision does not merely regulate future cases. It changes, with effect from the past, the legal consequences previously attached to birth abroad from an Italian ascendant.
This was one of the strongest objections raised by the Court of Turin.
Under the traditional understanding of Italian citizenship jure sanguinis, citizenship is acquired at birth, while the later administrative or judicial process merely ascertains a status already existing in law. On that basis, the referring court considered that the reform might amount to an implicit and retroactive deprivation of citizenship: individuals who would previously have been treated as Italian from birth were now deemed never to have acquired that status.
The Constitutional Court rejects that characterisation.
Its reasoning is built on a distinction which is technical, but central. Article 3-bis is retroactive, but it is not a revocation of citizenship. It does not withdraw a status already formally recognised by an Italian administrative authority or by a court. Rather, it introduces what the Court describes as an original preclusion to acquisition for those who were born abroad, hold another nationality, and do not fall within one of the exceptions preserved by the new law.
This distinction supports the entire structure of the judgment.
For the Court, a person whose citizenship has already been recognised is not in the same legal position as a person who has never obtained recognition. In the first case, there is an ascertained status. In the second, there is a claim which, however strong it might have appeared under the previous legal framework, had not yet become legally certain.
The Court therefore does not deny that recognition of citizenship by descent has traditionally been declaratory in nature. It does, however, limit the constitutional consequences of that principle. Where a person was born abroad and their Italian citizenship was never recorded, recognised or judicially ascertained, the Court considers that the position was not sufficiently consolidated to prevent the legislature from intervening retrospectively.
This is the legal turning point.
By treating Article 3-bis as a preclusion to acquisition rather than as a deprivation of an existing status, the Court avoids classifying the reform as a collective loss of citizenship. The case is instead placed within the broader question of how far the legislature can regulate access to citizenship in circumstances where the alleged status had never been formally established.
That does not mean that retroactive legislation is automatically legitimate. The Court still subjects the reform to a reasonableness assessment. It asks whether the balance struck by the legislature between legal certainty, legitimate expectations and the public interest was constitutionally acceptable.
Its answer is affirmative.
In the Court’s view, the retroactive effect of the reform is justified by the need to address an existing and structural situation, not merely future cases. A measure limited only to persons born after the entry into force of the law would have left untouched the very phenomenon which the reform sought to regulate: a potentially vast number of unrecognised citizenship claims arising from generations born abroad and often lacking any effective connection with Italy.
This is why the Court accepts retroactivity, while refusing the language of revocation. The reform affects past facts, but it does not remove a status already formally consolidated. It changes the conditions under which an unrecognised claim to citizenship by descent can still produce legal effects.
Iure sanguinis remains, but its constitutional meaning changes
The second decisive point is equally important: Judgment No. 63/2026 does not abolish Italian citizenship by descent, yet it changes the way in which it must now be understood. The Court does not deny the historical centrality of descent in Italian citizenship law. Nor does it erase jure sanguinis as a legal route. What it does is bring that route back within a constitutional idea of citizenship based on effectiveness and this is exactly where the judgment becomes especially significant.
Citizenship is no longer presented as the automatic legal consequence of a distant genealogical connection, capable of continuing indefinitely through generations born and resident abroad. Descent remains relevant, but it no longer operates in isolation from any substantive relationship with Italy.
For the Court, citizenship is a status rooted in membership of a political community. It entails rights, duties, participation, solidarity and a relationship with the Republic. It is not merely a documentary result produced by an ancestral line.
“Legislation such as that preceding the decree under consideration, which also allowed persons having no effective link with the republican community to obtain Italian citizenship without any limitation and, consequently, to participate, in the event of recognition, in the determination of decisions applicable to that community, on closer examination departed significantly from the model of citizenship outlined above.”
Immediately afterwards, the Court adds an even stronger passage:
“It allowed participation in political decisions concerning the community also by those who had not contributed to its progress, did not participate in its common destinies and could easily avoid the sacrifices and obligations arising from those decisions.”
This is the point at which the concept of a genuine link becomes central to the reasoning.
The Court accepts that the legislature was entitled to distinguish between cases where a real connection with Italy exists and cases where citizenship is claimed only through remote descent, without any effective bond with the national community.
This explains the structure of the reform. Recognition is preserved for those whose position had already been formally established, for those who had acted before the cut-off, and for those who fall within the specific exceptions introduced by the new law, such as the presence of a parent or grandparent who was exclusively Italian, or a relevant period of residence in Italy.
The result is not the end of jure sanguinis, yet it is the end of an unlimited mechanism, detached from time, territory and participation. In practical terms, the question is no longer only whether there is an Italian ancestor somewhere in the family line, but is whether that ancestry still falls within a legal route which the reform, and now the Constitutional Court, recognise as compatible with a real connection to Italy.
Recognition is not a mere formality
This is perhaps the most important passage of the judgment from a practical perspective: the Constitutional Court does not deny the traditional principle according to which citizenship by descent is linked to birth from an Italian citizen. In abstract terms, the status may arise at birth. However, for individuals born abroad, the Court draws a further and decisive distinction: without administrative or judicial recognition, that status is not legally certain.
This is where the judgment changes the practical landscape.
For the Court, a person born abroad who has never obtained recognition does not yet enjoy the legal regime of an Italian citizen. They cannot concretely exercise the rights attached to citizenship, nor can they be treated in the same way as someone whose status has already been ascertained by a municipality, a consulate or a court.
Recognition, therefore, is not treated as a minor procedural step. It is the moment in which the claimed status becomes legally certain and capable of producing its full effects. This point directly answers one of the strongest objections raised against the reform. Critics argued that, because citizenship by descent was acquired at birth under the previous framework, the new law deprived people of an already existing status. The Court rejects that approach. It accepts that there may have been a claim to recognition under the former rules, but it does not equate that unrecognised claim with a consolidated legal position.
In practical terms, this means that those who had not yet obtained recognition before the reform were not, in the Court’s view, in a position strong enough to prevent the legislature from changing the rules. This is a decisive shift.
The focus moves from ancestry alone to legal ascertainment. It is no longer sufficient to say that citizenship existed in theory from birth. What matters is whether that status had been formally recognised before the new law intervened, or whether the case falls within one of the preserved categories under the reform.
For future claims, this passage will be crucial. It means that documentation, filing dates, appointment records, and the procedural stage reached before the cut-off are no longer secondary details. They are central to the legal assessment of the case.
EU law does not change the outcome
Another important aspect of the judgment concerns European Union law.
The Court of Turin had relied on the case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union on the loss of nationality and, as a consequence, the loss of EU citizenship. That line of authority requires national authorities to assess, in individual cases, whether the loss of nationality is proportionate, especially where it also entails the loss of rights attached to Union citizenship.
At first sight, the argument was significant. Italian citizenship is also the gateway to EU citizenship. If a person loses Italian citizenship, they also lose the rights attached to being a citizen of the Union, including free movement and residence within the EU. For this reason, European case-law has developed safeguards where a Member State withdraws or causes the loss of nationality already held by an individual.
The Constitutional Court, however, considers that case-law inapplicable to Article 3-bis. Its reasoning follows the same distinction which underpins the rest of the judgment. The European cases concern individuals whose national citizenship had already been recognised and who were therefore already in a position to exercise the rights attached to EU citizenship. In those situations, the loss of nationality produces concrete legal consequences in the person’s life and requires an individual proportionality assessment.
Article 3-bis concerns a different situation: according to the Court, the persons affected by the reform had not yet obtained formal recognition of Italian citizenship. Their status as Italian citizens, and therefore as EU citizens, was not legally certain. They were not already exercising rights flowing from a recognised status. They were seeking recognition of a status which, under the new law, is now precluded unless one of the statutory exceptions applies.
This distinction is decisive, as for the Constitutional Court, there is no loss of EU citizenship where Italian citizenship had never been legally ascertained. There is therefore no obligation to carry out an individual proportionality assessment of the consequences of that loss. For the same reason, the Court found no need to make a preliminary reference to the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg.
This part of the judgment is particularly relevant for future litigation as it narrows the usefulness of EU-law arguments in cases where the applicant had not yet obtained recognition before the reform. The Court does not deny the importance of EU citizenship. Rather, it confines the European proportionality test to cases involving the loss of an already recognised status, not the failure of an unrecognised descent-based claim to produce citizenship under a later legislative framework.
The legislature had room to act
A further decisive aspect of the judgment is the scale of the phenomenon which the reform sought to address. The Constitutional Court does not treat the 2025 reform as an isolated restriction imposed without context. It looks at the wider picture: over time, the previous system had created an immense and largely undefined group of people who could potentially claim Italian citizenship by descent, even where their connection with Italy was remote, historic or purely genealogical.
The figures considered in the proceedings are striking: according to the State’s defence, the number of Italians resident abroad and born abroad increased by 51 per cent between 2013 and 2024, from just under three million to almost four and a half million. In Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela, around 90 per cent of registered Italians were born outside Italy. Pending court proceedings concerning citizenship rose from 23,654 in 2022 to 61,628 in 2024.
Beyond those pending applications, the potential pool of descendants of Italian emigrants worldwide was estimated at around 60 million.
This is the scale which, in the Court’s view, justified legislative intervention. If even a significant part of that potential group had obtained recognition of Italian citizenship, the consequences would have extended far beyond consular delays or an increase in court litigation. They would have affected the composition of the citizenry itself, the electoral body, the referendum quorum and, more broadly, the political and social balance of the Republic.
The Court does not deny the importance of Italian communities abroad. Nor does it suggest that descent from Italian emigrants is irrelevant. What it does say is that citizenship, as a legal status carrying political rights and constitutional duties, cannot be separated indefinitely from any effective relationship with the State.
This is where the Court’s attitude towards the legislature becomes clear. In matters of citizenship, Parliament enjoys a wide margin of discretion. The Court does not replace the legislature’s assessment with its own. It does not ask whether the 2025 reform was the only possible model, or whether a different transitional regime might have been more generous. Its task is narrower: to decide whether the balance struck by the law was constitutionally unreasonable. And the answer was clearly NO.
For the Court, the legislature pursued a legitimate aim: restoring a connection between citizenship and effective membership of the Republic. The previous regime allowed citizenship to be transmitted through generations born and resident abroad, without requiring a continuing relationship with Italy. The legislature was entitled to regard that as a structural problem.
The urgency of the decree-law is also understood in this context.
A reform limited only to future births would have left the existing pool of potential claimants almost entirely untouched. Millions of people already born abroad would still have been able to activate recognition at any time. In practical terms, a purely prospective reform would not have addressed the very situation which the decree-law had identified as urgent.
This is why retroactivity becomes central to the Court’s reasoning. The Court recognises that retroactivity affects expectations. It does not treat that lightly. But it considers that those expectations had to be weighed against a public interest of constitutional importance: preventing citizenship from becoming a status capable of expanding on a massive scale without a real link to the country whose political community it defines.
The message is clear. The legislature was entitled to intervene, and the choice to act retroactively was not considered irrational. In the Court’s view, the reform responded to a distortion which had developed over decades and which a future-only law would have failed to correct.
How the Court answers the objections raised by the Court of Turin
One of the strengths of Judgment No. 63/2026 lies in the fact that the Constitutional Court does not avoid the objections raised by the Court of Turin. On the contrary, it takes them seriously, then answers them by rebuilding the issue around a different legal premise.
The first objection concerned the cut-off date. The Turin court questioned the fairness of a rule which protected those who had already filed an application, or had already received an appointment, by 11:59 pm, Rome time, on 27 March 2025, while excluding those who acted immediately afterwards. In the case before the court, the point was particularly stark: the Venezuelan applicants filed their judicial claim on 28 March 2025, only a few hours after the deadline.
The Constitutional Court does not deny the severity of this outcome. It nevertheless considers the distinction constitutionally acceptable. In its view, filing an application, or having already received an appointment from the competent authority, is not a neutral fact. It shows that the person had already taken a formal step under the previous legal framework. That step gives greater weight to their legitimate expectation and allows the legislature to treat their position differently from that of those who had not yet entered the recognition process.
The second objection went to the heart of the case: had the reform, in substance, taken citizenship away?
The Court of Turin considered that citizenship jure sanguinis was acquired at birth under the previous rules. From that perspective, Article 3-bis looked like an implicit and retroactive deprivation of a status already held. The Constitutional Court rejects this reconstruction. Its answer turns on the role of formal recognition. A person born abroad who has never obtained administrative or judicial ascertainment of Italian citizenship is not, for the Court, in the same position as a person whose status has already been legally recognised. The former had a potential claim under the previous regime, but not a consolidated legal status capable of preventing later legislative intervention.
This is why the Court refuses to describe the reform as a revocation of citizenship. Article 3-bis is retroactive, but it does not remove a status already recognised. It changes the legal conditions under which an unrecognised claim to citizenship by descent is still capable of producing effects.
The third objection concerned the absence of a broader transitional period. The Turin court argued that the reform should have given those already born under the previous regime a reasonable opportunity to seek administrative or judicial recognition after the new law entered into force.
Here again, the Constitutional Court answers by relying on the same distinction. Where citizenship has already been recognised, the legal position is consolidated. Where recognition has never taken place, the position is different. The legislature, in the Court’s view, was entitled to protect applications already filed and appointments already communicated, without opening a general transitional window for the entire potential class of descendants born abroad.
The same reasoning also explains the Court’s rejection of the EU-law argument. The European case-law invoked by the Turin court concerns the loss of nationality already held, with the consequent loss of Union citizenship rights already exercisable. Article 3-bis, according to the Constitutional Court, concerns a different situation: not the loss of a recognised status, but the failure of an unrecognised claim to satisfy the new statutory conditions.
For that reason, the Court finds no need for an individual proportionality assessment and no need to refer the matter to the Court of Justice of the European Union.
The underlying logic is consistent throughout the judgment. The Court accepts that the reform is strict. It accepts that it operates retroactively. It accepts that it affects expectations built under the previous regime. What it does not accept is the equation between an unrecognised descent-based claim and an acquired citizenship status.
That is the decisive point. The applicants before the Court of Turin had not lost a citizenship status already legally ascertained. They had lost the possibility of obtaining recognition under the old, unlimited model of jure sanguinis. For the Constitutional Court, that difference is enough to uphold the legislative choice.
Between Legitimate Expectation and Mere Possibility
The Court’s reasoning also draws an important distinction between reliance and mere possibility. As a matter of fact, those who had already filed an application, or had already obtained an appointment before the cut-off, had done more than preserve an abstract hope. They had taken a formal step towards recognition under the previous legal framework. Their position therefore carried a stronger legitimate expectation.
By contrast, those who had lived for years, sometimes for most of their lives, without ever seeking recognition of Italian citizenship stood in a different position. Their ancestral link to Italy may have existed, but it had never been translated into a legally ascertained status.
This is a crucial point in the judgment. The reform undoubtedly closed a route which many people might later have wished to pursue. Yet, for those who had never obtained recognition, the Court does not see a settled legal life being overturned. They had not been exercising the rights of Italian citizens. They had not been subject to the duties attached to that status. They had not organised their legal position around a citizenship already recognised by the Italian State.
The Court underlines: “For none of the addressees of the new rules is there legal certainty as to their status as Italian citizens. On the contrary, for all the addressees of Article 3-bis there is certainty that, since the status had not been recognised, they could not concretely enjoy the rights, nor were they concretely subject to the duties, incumbent upon Italian citizens.”
And also: “It is true that foreigners of Italian origin had no specific duty to take action before 28 March 2025, but, from the perspective of legitimate expectation, those who did take action cannot be treated as equivalent to those who remained inactive in relation to a status which requires prior ascertainment for the effective enjoyment of the rights attached to it.”
In other words, the reform may have affected an expectation, but not, in the Court’s view, a consolidated status.
This explains why the Court gives greater constitutional weight to those who had already acted before the cut-off, and less weight to those who had remained outside the recognition process until the law changed. The question underlying the judgment is therefore quite direct: has the law truly disrupted the legal life of someone who had never been recognised as an Italian citizen and had never exercised that status?
The Court’s answer is, again, NO.
The Practical Consequences: Evidence, Timing and Alternative Routes
In practical terms, Judgment No. 63/2026 makes it far more difficult to argue that bloodline alone is still sufficient to obtain recognition of Italian citizenship. The decisive date remains 27 March 2025, at 11:59 pm, Rome time.
That cut-off now separates very different legal positions. Those who had already obtained recognition remain protected. Those who had already filed an administrative or judicial application before the deadline also remain within the previous framework. The same applies where an appointment had already been communicated by the competent office before that time, provided the application is then submitted on the scheduled date.
Outside those preserved situations, recognition by descent is still possible, but only where one of the statutory exceptions applies. The most important are the presence of a parent or grandparent who held exclusively Italian citizenship at the relevant time, or the existence of a parent or adoptive parent who resided in Italy for at least two continuous years after acquiring Italian citizenship and before the applicant’s birth or adoption.
The practical consequence is clear: the analysis no longer stops at the family tree. It now requires a much more careful assessment of timing, procedural steps and evidence. Was the application filed before the cut-off? Was an appointment communicated in time? Was the relevant ascendant exclusively Italian? Was there a qualifying period of residence in Italy? Did the line of transmission remain intact? Are there any causes of non-acquisition or loss of citizenship?
Proof becomes central.
The new framework tightens the evidential burden in citizenship proceedings. The claimant must not simply assert descent from an Italian ancestor. They must allege and prove the absence of circumstances that would prevent acquisition or show loss of citizenship along the line. Documentary evidence therefore becomes even more important: civil status records, naturalisation certificates, negative certificates, residence records, consular evidence, translations, apostilles and legalisations all become part of a more demanding legal assessment.
This is perhaps the most immediate change for applicants and practitioners. A claim that might previously have been presented mainly as a genealogical reconstruction must now be treated as a structured legal file. Each link in the chain matters. Each exception must be proved. Each procedural date matters.
At the same time, the reform does not leave descendants of Italians without any route. The system now redirects many cases towards alternative channels. These include acquisition by benefit of law in specific circumstances, declarations for minors within the statutory windows, entry into Italy for subordinate employment for persons of Italian origin, and facilitated naturalisation, with the residence requirement reduced from three years to two for certain descendants.
This confirms the broader logic of the judgment. Italian citizenship by descent has not disappeared, yet it has become more selective, more evidential, and more closely connected to a demonstrable relationship with Italy.
For anyone assessing a case today, the essential question is no longer only “Do I have an Italian ancestor?” The real question is: “Which legal route is still open, and can it be proved?”
The Issues Still Before the Court
The constitutional litigation is not entirely over. Further referrals remain pending before the Constitutional Court, including those from the courts of Mantua and Campobasso. The Mantua referral is particularly significant because it develops the criticism of the reform in more direct terms.
First, it focuses on the absence of a genuine transitional framework. In essence, the argument is that the law should have granted a reasonable period after its entry into force, allowing those already born under the previous regime to seek administrative or judicial recognition of citizenship.
Secondly, it renews the most sensitive objection: that Article 3-bis, despite its wording, produces in practical terms a retroactive deprivation of citizenship already acquired at birth under the former legal framework.
The Mantua referral also appears to give more explicit attention to Article 22 of the Constitution, which protects against deprivation of citizenship for political reasons, and to the question of urgency under Article 77, given that the reform was introduced by decree-law.
Campobasso, meanwhile, confirms that the constitutional debate has not yet been exhausted. That said, it is difficult to ignore the direction already set by Judgment No. 63/2026.
The Constitutional Court has accepted the broad discretion of the law-maker in matters of citizenship. It has placed the concept of an effective link with Italy at the centre of the constitutional analysis. It has also refused to treat an unrecognised claim to citizenship by descent as equivalent to a formally ascertained and protected status.
The pending referrals therefore remain important, especially on the transitional and urgency points. Yet they now stand against a judgment which has already defined the main constitutional framework.
For applicants and practitioners, the message is clear. The debate is moving away from the abstract idea of descent and towards a more concrete assessment of status, timing, proof and available legal routes.
Where do we stand after Judgment No. 63/2026?
• The Court has upheld the core of the 2025 reform and confirmed that, in this case, retroactivity is compatible with the Constitution.
• The key point is the distinction between deprivation of citizenship and preclusion from acquiring it.
• Descent alone is no longer sufficient: there must be an effective link with Italy, within the limits set by Law No. 74/2025.
• Without formal recognition, the Court does not regard the status as consolidated enough to prevent the new rules from applying.
• The Mantua and Campobasso referrals remain pending, but the Constitutional Court’s line of reasoning is now clearly defined.
If you are also wondering whether you are entitled to Italian citizenship, but do not know where to start or how to assess your position, contact me. We will examine your case together: micheladejulio@mmweurope.com
This article was originally published on LinkedIn and has been expanded with additional legal context and references for MMWEuropetranslations readers.
