Italian Citizenship Legal Updates

The first question before the Sezioni Unite concerns a 1912 Italian citizenship law. Law 555/1912 was Italy's first unified citizenship statute, and Article 12 paragraph 2 dealt with what happened to the citizenship of a minor (non-emancipated) child when the child's parent lost Italian citizenship by naturalizing in another country.

The strict historical reading of that article — applied by Italian consulates and courts for decades — says the minor child also automatically lost Italian citizenship in that moment, with no choice in the matter. Because citizenship cannot be passed down a bloodline that has been broken, every descendant after that minor child would also be considered non-Italian at birth.

This is known in the citizenship-by-descent community as the “minor rule” or “minor issue,” and it is the ground on which otherwise eligible descendants were refused. No consulate or ministry publishes refusal reasons, so nobody can say how many.

In Cassazione Order 17161/2023 and Sentence 454/2024, the Corte di Cassazione's First Civil Section applied this strict reading. According to news coverage, the Italian Ministry of the Interior issued a circular dated October 3, 2024 instructing Italian consulates and municipal civil registry offices to follow those rulings.

The cases before the Sezioni Unite challenge that interpretation. According to Servizi Demografici and ItalyGet, the First Civil Section itself referred the question to the Sezioni Unite in two interlocutory orders (20122/2025 and 20129/2025, both dated July 18, 2025), observing that lower courts were issuing conflicting rulings and that the question needed to be resolved at the highest level.

In an interview with ItalyGet on February 12, 2026, attorney Marco Mellone framed the stakes this way:

“Italians emigrated and naturalized late, at 30, 35, or 40 years old. At the time, the age of majority was reached at 21. It is clear that they had minor children.”

Read against that: on the strict reading, the chain broke wherever an Italian emigrant naturalised while a child of theirs was still under 21, which is the pattern Mellone is describing for the emigration of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. How many lines that covers is not something any authority publishes, and we do not estimate it.

The March 2026 event is a different court, a different case, and it has already been decided. It is often conflated in public coverage with the Sezioni Unite minor-issue case (decided July 26, 2026), but the two are distinct. Understanding the difference matters for understanding what is still open.

On March 11, 2026, Italy's Constitutional Court (the Corte Costituzionale, a separate court from the Corte di Cassazione) held a public hearing on the constitutional legitimacy of Article 3-bis of Law 91/1992 — the descent restriction at the core of the Tajani Decree. According to reporting by Open Online and the Italian Citizenship Assistance writeup, the challenge had been referred to the Constitutional Court by the Tribunal of Turin on behalf of a group of eight Venezuelan descendants of Italian citizens.

One feature of that case is worth pulling out of the judgment itself, because it bears on a question people often assume is still open. The claimants' line ran through «un ascendente di sesso femminile, sposata con cittadino straniero e con cui aveva avuto un figlio prima della promulgazione della vigente Costituzione del 1948» — a female ancestor married to a foreign citizen who had a child before the 1948 Constitution. That is the classic 1948-case shape. The referring judge recorded that under the pre-2025 framework the claim would have been well founded, held that Article 3-bis nonetheless applied because the claimants are Venezuelan citizens and fall outside its exceptions, and referred the constitutionality question on that footing. The Court upheld Article 3-bis. So the proposition that the 1948 judicial route sits outside the 2025 reform is not merely undecided — it sits against a decided case.

The Turin Tribunal asked the Constitutional Court to assess whether Article 3-bis violated four constitutional principles: equality (Article 3 of the Italian Constitution), reasonableness, legal certainty, and Italy's international obligations. According to CNN's March 14, 2026 report, the challenge argued that the new rules “effectively outlaw dual citizenship for the diaspora.”

On March 12, 2026, the Constitutional Court announced its decision via press release. Per Open Online, IMI Daily, Boccadutri, and Mondaq's legal analysis, the Court rejected the challenges “in parte non fondate e in parte inammissibili” (“partly unfounded and partly inadmissible”), upholding the core of the reform — including Article 3-bis and its March 27, 2025 cut-off. This is the ruling the Associated Press referenced when it wrote that “Italy's constitutional court ruled the new law valid last month.”

What the Constitutional Court ruling did NOT do: it did not resolve the specific ius superveniens question — whether the 2025 reform reaches applications that were already made by 23:59 Rome time on March 27, 2025 and are still pending under the old rules. That is the question the Sezioni Unite answered on July 26, 2026 (Section 4). The Constitutional Court also did not address the minor rule under Law 555/1912 (Section 2) — the other question the Sezioni Unite resolved, and the one the Interior Ministry has since implemented through Circular 65050.

Full written ruling: Sentenza 63/2026 (deposited April 30, 2026)

The full written ruling — Sentenza 63/2026 — was deposited by the Constitutional Court on April 30, 2026. This is the complete legal text of the decision announced via press release on March 12. The challenges were found either unfounded on the merits or procedurally inadmissible; Law 74/2025's restrictions remain fully in force. Two holdings are particularly significant for descendants tracking this case.

Non-acquisition, not revocation. The Court built its reasoning on the distinction between having an ancestral connection that could lead to Italian citizenship and having that connection formally recognized. Article 3-bis says affected persons are "è considerato non avere mai acquistato la cittadinanza italiana" — considered never to have acquired Italian citizenship. The Court read this as a deliberate legislative choice to establish an initial bar to acquisition, not to revoke an existing right. The Court noted that the article was placed in the section on acquisition, not in the sections on revocation or loss: "La nuova disposizione è chiara nel configurare una preclusione originaria all'acquisto della cittadinanza italiana per gli stranieri nati all'estero, e non una revoca" ("The new provision clearly establishes an initial bar to the acquisition of Italian citizenship for foreigners born abroad, rather than a revocation"). Without formal recognition, a person was not exercising any Italian citizen rights or duties, so the law closes off a possibility rather than removing a realized status.

Retroactivity upheld. The retroactivity was explicitly upheld. The Court found it constitutionally permissible to correct the 1912 law's unlimited descent chain retroactively, reasoning on two levels. On the public interest side: the 1912 framework was "unsuitable for achieving the goal of balancing the need to maintain a connection with emigrants (and their descendants) with that of preserving an effective bond between them and Italy" and created a pool of "potential Italian citizens" so large that even the Italian state cannot enumerate it — a forward-only fix would have left this problem entirely intact. On the reliance side: people whose status had not been formally recognized had weaker reliance interests than fully recognized citizens, and the corrective character of the law takes precedence over reliance — consistent with the Court's own earlier rulings (Judgments No. 182 of 2022 and No. 136 of 2022).

EU law and international treaty arguments dismissed. The Turin Tribunal's referral also challenged the law on EU citizenship grounds (Articles 9 TEU and 20 TFEU) and international treaty obligations (Article 15(2) UDHR on arbitrary deprivation of nationality; Article 3(2), Protocol 4 ECHR on the right to enter one's own country). The operative part of the judgment separates the two: the questions under Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution and the question under Article 117(1) in relation to Article 9 TEU and Article 20 TFEU were declared «non fondata» — unfounded on the merits, the Court holding that EU citizenship rights activate only once national citizenship has been formally recognised — while the UDHR and ECHR Protocol 4 questions were declared «inammissibile», inadmissible. Article 3-bis survived every head.

Existing provisions noted in proportionality analysis. In assessing overall proportionality, the Court noted existing provisions in Law 74/2025 and surrounding legislation that mitigate the reform's impact — these are features of the law itself, not court-ordered remedies: an extended deadline for minor-children declarations (now May 31, 2029, extended by Law 26/2026 before this ruling), new work visa pathways for Italian descendants with no generational limits, and a reduction of the naturalization residency period from three years to two.

What Sentenza 63/2026 explicitly left open. The Court expressly reserved the question of people who started the consular application process but did not receive a confirmed appointment by 23:59 on March 27, 2025. Whether they can be treated differently from those who never filed is a question this ruling did not decide. That gap may still be addressed by the Sezioni Unite, or in the Mantova and Campobasso proceeding once it resumes after the EU Court of Justice answers the question referred to it on July 23, 2026.

Earlier: Sentenza 142/2025 (a third, separate ruling)

A third Constitutional Court ruling — Sentenza 142/2025, decided June 24, 2025 and deposited July 31, 2025 — is often mentioned alongside the March 2026 ruling, but it addressed yet another different challenge. Per the Constitutional Court's own case summary and Boccadutri's explainer, Sentenza 142/2025 concerned the pre-Tajani framework itself. The Court declined to restrict citizenship by descent through its own ruling and clarified that the new 2025 rules do not apply to cases already pending at the March 27, 2025 cut-off.

Neither Constitutional Court ruling resolved the ius superveniens question. And a fourth Constitutional Court hearing — held on June 9, 2026 — addressed a related set of challenges from the Tribunals of Mantova and Campobasso, specifically on the retroactivity of Article 3-bis. That proceeding did not end in a ruling on the merits: on July 23, 2026 the Court issued Ordinanza 147/2026, staying the case and referring the Article 3-bis question to the Court of Justice of the European Union. See Section 6 for the full watch list.

The second question put to the Sezioni Unite concerned timing: whether Italy's 2025 citizenship reform applies retroactively to people who were already Italian at birth under the old rules. The Court answered this on July 26, 2026 for the judicial route — Law 74/2025 does not reach recognition claims filed before March 27, 2025. It was a separate question from the Constitutional Court's March 2026 ruling (Section 3), because it addresses a different legal mechanism — the application of new law to already-pending proceedings — rather than the constitutionality of Law 74/2025 as a statute.

The reform in question is Decree-Law 36 of March 28, 2025, widely known as the “Decreto Tajani” after Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani. Carry all three of its dates, because coverage routinely collapses them: March 28 is the day it was signed and published, it entered into force on March 29, 2025, and the cut-off written into the rule itself is 23:59 Rome time on March 27, 2025. It was converted into Law 74 of May 23, 2025, published in the Gazzetta Ufficiale (Serie Generale n. 118) and in force from May 24, 2025. Descriptions of the rule as restricting recognition to applicants whose parent or grandparent was born in Italy — which is how a good deal of coverage from spring 2025 still puts it, including explainers we linked at the time — describe the decree as originally issued. Conversion changed it. In the text in force, Article 3-bis treats anyone born abroad who holds another citizenship as never having acquired Italian citizenship, unless one of five conditions applies: recognition already sought by the March 27, 2025 cut-off (letter a), an appointment already communicated by it (letter a-bis), a judicial claim filed by it (letter b), an ascendant of the first or second degree who holds — or held at death — exclusively Italian citizenship (letter c), or a parent or adopter resident in Italy for two continuous years after acquiring Italian citizenship and before the child's birth (letter d). “Born in Italy” appears nowhere in it, and the one condition that did use that language, lett. e), was deleted on conversion. The difference is not cosmetic: it decides two common cases in opposite directions from the shorthand.

Article 3-bis preserves eligibility under the old rules for applications made by 23:59 Rome time on March 27, 2025 — the statute names a time as well as a date, and covers filings with a consulate, with an Italian mayor, and with a court. Nobody publishes how many such applications are still pending, so we do not put a number on it.

What the Sezioni Unite was asked: whether Law 74/2025 reaches those grandfathered applications through a doctrine called ius superveniens (new law applied to pending proceedings), or whether they continue to be governed by the pre-2025 framework. In its July 26, 2026 decision the Court answered for the judicial route: Law 74/2025 does not apply to judicial recognition claims filed before March 27, 2025 — those remain under the prior law. (The broader question of the cap's compatibility with EU law is now separately before the EU Court of Justice; see Section 3.)

The Sezioni Unite decision (July 26, 2026) closed the minor-issue thread, but the story is not over: the EU-law question about Article 3-bis is now before the Court of Justice of the European Union after the Constitutional Court stayed and referred it on July 23, 2026 (Ordinanza 147/2026), and Sentenza 63/2026 left one question expressly reserved. A separate, non-judicial thread now runs alongside them: Legge 19 gennaio 2026, n. 11 (Section 5) is already in force and its consulate intake caps and thirty-six-month term have implementing details still to surface. Here is what we are still watching.

• How Legge 11/2026 lands in practice at each consulate. The statute (see Section 5) has fixed each consular office's annual intake ceiling at the proceedings it concluded in 2025, floor one hundred, and set a thirty-six-month term for concluding them — but it publishes no per-office numbers and prescribes no public register of them. What we are watching: whether MAECI or individual consulates publish their annual ceilings, how the cap interacts with Prenot@Mi slot releases in practice, and whether the 24-month figure still shown on some consulate pages gets corrected to thirty-six. We will report published figures when they appear and will not estimate them in the meantime.
• The move to a central MAECI office, and its implementing detail. Comma 5 sets the transfer of adult recognition applications from the consular network to a central Foreign Ministry office at the first of January of the third calendar year after entry into force — January 1, 2029 by derivation from the February 19, 2026 date, not a year the statute itself prints. The statute does not name the office, publish a fee schedule, or set out the filing address; comma 3 only establishes that filing is on paper and by post. Those details would normally arrive by implementing decree or ministerial circular, and this page will link them when they do.
• Cassazione First Section Ordinance 13818/2026 (deposited May 12, 2026) — pre-reform ruling, new ATQ principles. The First Civil Section of the Corte Suprema di Cassazione reinstated a Colombian family's iure sanguinis recognition (R.G. 1944/2025; presiding judge Maria Acierno). The family applied in 2022 — before Law 74/2025 — making this a pre-reform ruling. Two holdings are attracting legal attention: (1) the court twice describes citizenship as a right “existing from the moment of the holder's birth, permanent and imprescriptible” — language that contrasts with the Constitutional Court's Sentenza 63/2026 framing of iure sanguinis citizenship as precarious until formally recognized; (2) consular queue blockages alone are sufficient ATQ standing — no prior formally accepted application required. Per Avv. Michele Vitale (ItalyGet), the ruling does not hold that Law 74/2025 is unconstitutional or inapplicable to post-reform cases. Sources: ItalyGet analysis by Avv. Vitale; Insieme article (full 13-page ruling included).
• Naples Tribunale post-DL ATQ (May 14, 2026) — attorney reported, pending published source. Avv. Vito Renato Di Ruggiero (Studio Legale Di Ruggiero, Salerno) reported a successful citizenship recognition for a family who fell outside the Article 3-bis conditions. The petition was filed after March 27, 2025. The Tribunale di Napoli held that a letter sent to the competent consulate requesting recognition before the deadline — in the absence of a formal appointment due to well-documented consular dysfunction — was sufficient to assert rights under the pre-reform regime. This ruling is based on the attorney's own published statement; a citable news article is pending and this entry will be updated when one is available.
• The Sezioni Unite decision (published July 26, 2026) — the minor issue is resolved. The expanded panel published its ruling from the April 14 hearing on July 26, 2026 (n. 24045/2026; Primo Presidente Pasquale D'Ascola, reporting judge Alberto Pazzi). It held that a child who was a dual citizen from birth kept Italian citizenship under Art. 7 of Law 555/1912 despite a parent's later naturalization during the child's minority (unless the child renounced as an adult), overturning the Circular 43347/2024 reading; and it confirmed that Law 74/2025 does not apply to judicial recognition claims filed before March 27, 2025. The open question we were watching here — whether the Interior Ministry would tell consulates to follow the courts — was answered on August 10, 2026 (see the next item). Note that Sentenza 63/2026 (the Constitutional Court's ruling deposited April 30) addressed constitutional validity, a distinct question from the interpretive one the Sezioni Unite decided.
• Interior Ministry Circular 65050 (August 10, 2026) — the administrative gap is closed. The Direzione Centrale per i diritti civili, la cittadinanza e le minoranze instructed the Prefects — copying the Foreign Ministry, which oversees the consulates, and the Central Directorate for Demographic Services, which oversees the comuni — to bring the ruling to Mayors and Civil Status Officers and align administrative practice with it. Circular 43347/2024 is declared superseded, but only for naturalizations of the cohabiting parent between July 1, 1912 and August 15, 1992; earlier naturalizations remain under the 1865 civil code and the principles of Cass. 454/2024. For applications already denied on the old reading, the circular directs applicants to seek a mero riesame — a re-examination of the original application — from the authority that issued the denial, which stays competent even after a change of residence. Because the re-examination applies the law in force when the original application was filed, applications filed before March 27, 2025 (or resting on an appointment communicated by that date) are not subject to the Article 3-bis restrictions. What we are watching next: how quickly individual consulates absorb this into their queues, and whether the Ministry publishes the circular in its own public archive.
• The June 9, 2026 Constitutional Court hearing — resolved July 23, 2026 by referral to the EU Court of Justice. The Constitutional Court held its hearing on June 9, 2026 — presided over by Court President Giovanni Amoroso, with Prof. Giovanni Pitruzzella as reporting judge — consolidating the Tribunal of Mantova referral (Ordinanza 4/2026) with the two Campobasso referrals (ordinances n. 40 and 41/2026) into a single unified proceeding. All three referrals challenge Article 3-bis (introduced into Law 91/1992 by Law 74/2025), raising questions about whether citizenship by descent is a right existing at birth, whether Parliament can retroactively restrict already-existing claims through an emergency decree, whether the March 27, 2025 appointment cutoff arbitrarily disadvantages applicants left waiting by consular backlogs, and whether the retroactive loss of EU citizenship requires a preliminary reference to the Court of Justice of the EU. The challenges were argued chiefly under Art. 3 (equality), Art. 22 (the bar on depriving anyone of citizenship), and Art. 117 (EU-law conformity); the Mantova referral additionally centers on a person born Italian who lost citizenship as a minor, with no capacity to consent. For the government, State Attorney Lorenzo D'Ascia defended the reform as proportionate, contended Article 3-bis does not affect family unity, downplayed Cassazione Order 13818/2026 as applying to a now-superseded framework, and argued the judicial route was always available without consular waiting lists — so diligent applicants could have litigated before the deadline. Consistent with Constitutional Court practice — and as Mondaq had anticipated — no decision was issued from the bench; the Court reserved its decision. A full English transcript and subtitled video of the hearing are available via Avv. Michele Vitale's ItalyGet report. The outcome arrived on July 23, 2026 — and it was not a ruling on the merits. In Ordinanza 147/2026 (ECLI:IT:COST:2026:147) the Court stayed its own proceedings and referred a preliminary question to the Court of Justice of the European Union under Article 267 TFEU, asking whether Article 9 TEU and Article 20 TFEU — the provisions establishing EU citizenship — preclude national legislation configuring an original preclusion (“preclusione originaria”) to the acquisition of Italian citizenship for a person born abroad, including someone born before the provision entered into force, who holds another citizenship and falls outside the statutory exceptions. This is the same EU-law question the Court had declined to decide on the merits in Sentenza 63/2026; commentators differ on whether the referral reverses that ruling or defers consistently with it. Critically, the stay suspends the Italian constitutional proceeding, not the statute: Article 3-bis remains in force, and Article 3-bis continues to apply to anyone who did not make a claim by 23:59 Rome time on March 27, 2025 and does not meet one of its ancestor conditions. The CJEU publishes no case-specific timetable. What it does publish, in its own description of how the procedure works, is that “on average, cases take between 16 and 18 months from start to finish” — a figure the Court gives for its cases generally, not for preliminary references specifically. Adding it to a July 2026 referral puts a decision no earlier than late 2027, which is our arithmetic rather than the Court’s estimate. This page will be updated when Luxembourg rules.
• The reserved question: applicants who started but did not receive a confirmed appointment by March 27, 2025. Sentenza 63/2026 explicitly left open whether applicants who began the consular process (e.g., submitted a Prenot@mi request or sent documentation) but did not receive a confirmed appointment by 23:59 on March 27, 2025 can be treated differently from those who never filed anything. This question was “estranea al giudizio a quo” (outside the case before this Court) and was not decided. It may be addressed by the Sezioni Unite, by the Mantova + Campobasso proceeding once it resumes after the CJEU answers the referred question, or in future litigation.
• Ministry of Interior guidance. When a ruling changes the interpretation of the citizenship statutes, the Italian Ministry of the Interior issues a circular updating consular and municipal practice. That is what happened here: Circular 65050 of August 10, 2026 implemented the Sezioni Unite decision and superseded Circular 43347/2024. A further circular would be expected if either Constitutional Court proceeding alters the applicability of Law 74/2025 — most notably once the EU Court of Justice answers the referred Article 3-bis question. This page will link new circulars when they appear.