Since Italy became a nation in 1861, there has been a way to know with certainty who is and who is not an Italian citizen. It’s about looking at your parents.
The first page of the Civil Code, published in 1865 as Europe’s newest national rulebook, declared that children born to Italian citizens were Italian citizens.
This founding doctrine of the Bel Paese family now appears to be changing. It means the diaspora’s dreams of returning to their homeland are over, and Italians who move abroad risk having their descendants stripped of their citizenship.
On Thursday, the Constitutional Court said it would rule in favor of the government and its controversial 2025 law restricting citizenship for foreign-born people. The law was promulgated by emergency decree in March last year, but was challenged by four judges who questioned its constitutionality.
Now, a statement released by the court after the first of four hearings was held on Wednesday indicates that the court supports the government’s position.
“The Constitutional Court has declared that the questions regarding constitutional legitimacy raised by the Turin Tribunal are partly baseless and partly inadmissible,” the court announced. A detailed verdict is expected to be announced in the coming weeks.
The announcement will be a devastating blow to those who believed the court would uphold Italy’s 160-year history of citizenship by descent.
Professor Corrado Caruso, one of the lawyers who filed the lawsuit against the new law, told CNN: “It was a very clear and harsh intervention, so we were hoping that it would be found to violate several constitutional points, but the court did not find that.”
Italian citizenship rules have been linked to the diaspora since the country’s founding.
Previously, Italians who emigrated abroad could often pass on their citizenship to their children by acquiring another nationality, unless they renounced or lost their nationality. What many now consider the land of La Dolce Vita was once a poor country, with 16 million people emigrating between 1861 and 1918 in search of a better life.
Many of those who left their jobs, not voluntarily, but out of necessity, considered themselves Italians for life and chose to maintain their citizenship while living and working abroad. This means that citizenship, along with cultural traditions, is passed down from generation to generation.
This principle, established in 1865, was confirmed in Italy’s first Targeted Citizenship Law of 1912, with the addition of a provision that Italians born and residing abroad would retain citizenship, and again confirmed in the 1992 law.
However, the law introduced by emergency decree on March 28 last year stipulates that only people with Italian-born parents or grandparents can be recognized as citizens. It also effectively outlaws dual nationality in the diaspora, as parents or grandparents must hold only Italian citizenship at the time of their offspring’s birth or, if earlier, their own death.
There have long been complaints on both sides about citizenship for foreign-born descendants.
For foreign-born people, gaining recognition takes time and money. They must obtain birth, marriage and death certificates from their ancestral homeland (a process that can take years and cost up to 300 euros per document), prove that no one in their ancestral line has lost their citizenship, and then secure an appointment at a local consulate. The waiting list there can be as long as 10 years — if you can get a spot.
Hiring a lawyer to sue the government can speed up the process, but costs can run into the tens of thousands of euros for a family.
Additionally, women could not pass on citizenship until 1948. This means that descendants of Italian women who gave birth before then will not be recognized. Since 2009, many people have successfully sued states for sex discrimination if they had the means. They too are now seeing doors slamming shut.
Meanwhile, Italy’s local courts are crowded with thousands of civil rights cases and consulates are flooded with applications.
At the time of passing this decree, the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that between 2014 and 2024, the number of Italian citizens living abroad will increase from 4.6 million to 6.4 million. The Italian Consulate General in Argentina processed 30,000 applications in 2024, an increase of 10,000 from the previous year.
“The granting of citizenship was recognized as problematic for various reasons,” said Caruso, a law professor at the University of Bologna. “There were many requests and the consulate was unable to respond. There was a belief that the descendants had long-standing ties to Italy. It was believed that the descendants did not take part in public affairs – they were not in the country and did not pay taxes. There were also geopolitical issues. These nationals can travel around the world on Italian passports, so there may have been some pressure from Italy’s historic allies.
“I wasn’t optimistic about the chances because I could see that the government and its lawyers felt very strongly about this reform.
It was politically huge. In other words, their interests were at risk. ”
Citizenship by blood has not always been so popular. At the Tokyo Olympics, 12% of Italy’s national team was born abroad, including 10 from the United States. And three months before the new decree was introduced, Argentina’s right-wing president Javier Millei, an ally of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, was granted citizenship by descent during a state visit to Italy.
Italy continues to grapple with a shrinking and aging population while closing its doors to the diaspora.
In 2024, a record 155,732 Italians emigrated, and more than 500,000 residents left the country between 2020 and 2024. Most immigrants have left Sicily, but enterprising local authorities are trying to redress the balance by bringing back Italian descendants from abroad. In Mussomeli, a town known for its €1 housing projects, an Argentine doctor has been hired to staff a sick local hospital. Such projects will not be possible under the new nationality restrictions.
“This cut off a huge number of descendants who applied for recognition but were not given an appointment,” Caruso said. “There is now a disparity within the nuclear family. One sibling may have citizenship, but the other does not receive the same treatment.”
Lawyers for the state successfully argued that descendants previously thought to be born with citizenship were actually born with the expectation of citizenship, and that if they did not formally claim citizenship by 2025, they would have a “fictitious connection” to the country and lose that right.
Caruso was depressed because the Constitutional Court’s verdict could not be appealed. “I don’t want to lose hope,” he said. “Maybe the war is not over, but it will be a difficult war.” The Constitutional Court is still considering the two remaining referrals, but he believes his descendants’ last hope lies with the EU courts. “Those who have already filed a lawsuit should ask the judge to refer their case to Luxembourg,” he said, adding that he did not advise those who have not yet filed a lawsuit to proceed.
However, not everyone is so depressed. Another citizenship lawyer, Marco Melone, told CNN that the situation could still change.
“This does not mean that the new law is 100% effective and permanent,” he said. “The case brought by Italian judges to the Constitutional Court is still open for argument. In July 2025, the Constitutional Court ruled that descendants are entitled to Italian citizenship from birth. I think they have changed their mind. This is very strange.”
Mr Melone will take aim at the new law at another hearing on April 14 at the Court of Cassation, Italy’s highest legal authority, which trumps the opinion of the Constitutional Court.
“This is a very sad day for millions of people, but I didn’t study law for 25 years to see something like this happen,” he said. “The descendants were born Italian citizens. If they were citizens from birth, they have the right to be untouched. They cannot say that what they said at birth was not true. They are no longer Italian citizens. They cannot say that they were joking. This is the first step in a long battle.”
He advised that descendants who have already filed a lawsuit should apply for an adjournment until the fall. Those who have not yet applied were advised to wait.
“With this ruling… lawyers will have much more work to do than before, but I am still confident,” he said. “I’m a little less confident than I was last week. But even though I lost the battle, I haven’t lost the war.”
