Italian Citizenship by Descent 2026: Constitutional Court Ruling No. 63 - Legal Analysis - Law Firm Nepi - Italian Lawyer Licensed in Italy & New York

On April 30, 2026, the Italian Constitutional Court issued ruling no. 63/2026 (here is the link to the full decision: https://www.cortecostituzionale .it/scheda –pronuncia /2026/63), rejecting constitutional challenges to Article 3-bis of Law no. 91/1992, as introduced by Decree-Law no. 36/2025 (converted into Law no. 74/2025). This provision fundamentally restructured, in a restrictive and retroactive manner, the criteria for acquiring Italian citizenship by descent (iure sanguinis) for Italians born abroad.

The decision represents a watershed moment in citizenship law and raises questions of considerable constitutional significance. While we understand this outcome will be deeply disappointing for many families who have maintained strong ties with their Italian heritage, it is important to analyze the Court’s reasoning and explore what options, if any, remain available.

What Changed: Understanding Italy’s New Citizenship by Descent Rules (2025-2026)

Article 3-bis of Law no. 91/1992, as challenged, establishes that “anyone born abroad, even before this article came into force, who possesses another citizenship is considered never to have acquired Italian citizenship,” subject to specific exceptions.

The exceptions, crucial to understanding the reform’s scope, are, in a nutshell:

(Successful) Applications already filed (or appointments already scheduled) by 11:59 PM on March 27, 2025;
(Successful) Lawsuits already filed by 11:59 PM on March 27, 2025;
A parent or grandparent holding Italian citizenship exclusively;
A parent or adoptive parent who resided in Italy for at least two continuous years after acquiring citizenship and before the child’s birth/adoption.

The provision effectively froze the transmission of citizenship as of March 27, 2025, retroactively precluding acquisition of status for all those who had not yet obtained recognition or filed an application/a lawsuit.

The Questions Raised by the Turin Tribunal

The Turin Tribunal, tasked with deciding a petition by eight Venezuelan citizens descended from a nineteenth-century Italian emigrant, essentially raised constitutional questions on four grounds:

Violation of Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution for breach of equality, reasonableness, and legitimate expectations in legal certainty;
Violation of Article 117(1) of the Constitution in relation to Articles 9 TEU and 20 TFEU on European citizenship;
Violation of Article 117(1) of the Constitution in relation to Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (prohibition of arbitrary deprivation of citizenship);
Violation of Article 117(1) of the Constitution in relation to Article 3(2) of Protocol No. 4 to the ECHR (right to enter one’s country of citizenship).

The Constitutional Court’s Conclusions

The Court declared:

Inadmissible the questions concerning the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the ECHR Protocol;
Not well-founded the questions regarding violations of Articles 2, 3, and 117 of the Constitution in relation to European Union law.

The decision seems to be a total rejection: answering the Turin Tribunal’s questions, the citizenship reform by descent is deemed constitutionally legitimate, including, apparently, in its retroactive application.

The Court’s Reasoning: The Principle of Effective Connection with the State

The Constitutional Foundation: People, Sovereignty, and Territory

The Court constructed its reasoning from a comprehensive analysis of the constitutional concept of the people. Invoking Articles 1, 3, 4, and 54 of the Constitution, the ruling elaborates a vision of citizenship as an effective connection between individual and national community, characterized by:

Solidarity and reciprocity of rights and duties;
Active participation in community life;
Sharing of common destinies and collective burdens;
Loyalty to the Republic and its constitutional principles.

The Court emphasizes that universal suffrage and the Republican Constitution inextricably linked status civitatis and status activae civitatis: whoever is a citizen also holds political rights that affect the community. This necessitates a substantial connection between citizen and State.

The Principle of Effectiveness (Genuine Link)

The ruling valorizes the genuine link criterion, already recognized by:

The 1997 European Convention on Nationality;
Jurisprudence of the EU Court of Justice (judgment C-181/23);
Other European constitutional courts (France, Portugal, Germany).

According to the Court, Italy’s previous legislation, which allowed unlimited transmission of citizenship by descent, without any effective connection to Italy, constituted a unique situation in the European landscape and had progressively diverged from the constitutional model of citizenship.

The Divergence Between Legislation and Constitution

A central passage of the ruling (sections 8.2.4 and 8.2.5) highlights how the pre-2025 framework had progressively diverged from constitutional principles. The Court observed, perhaps controversially, that:

“legislation […] that allowed even persons having no effective connection with the Republican community to obtain Italian citizenship without limitation and, therefore, to participate […] in determining decisions applicable to that community, clearly departed considerably from the citizenship model outlined above.“

The Court found this situation weakened the legitimacy of the majority principle and allowed subjects external to the community to influence political decisions binding on those who actually live and work in Italy. While this reasoning has its internal logic, one might question whether it fully accounts for the strong emotional, cultural, and familial ties many descendants maintain with Italy across generations, even without formal residence.

Balancing Against Legitimate Expectations

The Reasonableness Test Criteria

The Court applied its established reasonableness test for retroactive laws (citing ruling no. 70/2024 and ruling no. 108/2019), examining:

The weight of the public interest pursued;
The substance of the legitimate expectations impaired;
Compensatory measures introduced.

The Weight of the Public Interest

The Court recognized full legitimacy and constitutional relevance to the objective of restoring the nexus between people, sovereignty, and territory, allegedly preventing:

Millions of persons without ties to Italy from exercising political rights;
The electorate becoming an “indeterminate entity, unconnected to national territory”;
Security risks for Italy and other EU Member States.

Retroactivity was justified by the Court because limiting effects to those born after 2025 would have left the problematic situation unchanged, frustrating the reform’s purposes. While the Court’s concern for democratic coherence is perhaps understandable, the characterization of citizenship claimants as a “security risk” may strike some as disproportionate, particularly given that the vast majority seek citizenship for economic opportunity and family reunification rather than political participation.

The Limited Weight of Legitimate Expectations

The Court found that recipients’ expectations were weak for several reasons:

No consolidated position: for none of the recipients was Italian citizenship status legally certain, lacking official recognition;
Corrective character of the provision: the reform removes effects of an imbalanced framework, where protection of expectations is less intense;
Predictability of change: the Italian regime represented a European anomaly and signals of policy reversal (although on a completely different level) had emerged in late 2024.

Significantly, the Court stated that “one cannot consider equivalent […] those who took action versus those who remained inactive“: those who never filed an application cannot invoke the same expectations as those who initiated recognition procedures. This reasoning, while legally sound, may feel harsh to families who were unaware of the impending change or were waiting for the right moment to pursue their claims. Not only that, the above completely disregards the reality of the application procedure abroad: many families were indeed actively trying to submit their applications but were unable, despite themselves, to find appointments and/or had been gathering the multiple documents required by the procedure or the Italian authorities (which often went beyond the strictly necessary documents) for years (and were finally about to submit them). The requirement to have acted in a certain way by a specific date creates what some might view as an arbitrary dividing line through families with identical genealogical claims.

Compensatory Measures

The Court credited provisions introduced by the decree to facilitate access to citizenship for persons of Italian origin, among others:

with certain limits, Article 9(1)(a) of Law no. 91/1992 facilitated naturalization (two years instead of three) for foreigners descended from Italians;
Article 27(1-octies) of Legislative Decree no. 286/1998: quota-free entry for subordinate employment for descendants of Italians residing in historical emigration countries.

These measures, according to the Court, demonstrate that the legislature balanced the genuine link requirement with preservation of preferential pathways for those with Italian roots. However, while these alternatives exist, they require residence in Italy and represent a fundamentally different pathway than the iure sanguinis recognition many families had anticipated.

European Law Questions

European Citizenship and the Proportionality Principle

The Court declared not well-founded the question concerning violation of Articles 9 TEU and 20 TFEU, based on a careful distinction:

EU Court of Justice case law (Rottmann, Tjebbes, Udlændinge-og Integrationsministeriet C-689/21) concerns cases of loss of already-recognized citizenship and concretely exercisable rights;
In the Italian case, by contrast, none of the recipients had legally certain status and effectively exercisable rights as Italian citizens.

The Court noted that Article 3-bis does not provide for loss of citizenship but introduces new conditions for acquisition ex tunc (retroactively applied). According to the Court the difference is substantial: it is not about depriving someone of acquired rights but precluding an acquisition that had not yet been formally perfected. European case law requires an individual proportionality assessment only when the measure results in loss of an established status. The Court here found that prerequisite absent, making reference to the 2023 Danish judgment inapposite. This distinction, while technically correct, may seem too formalistic to families who understood themselves to be Italian citizens based on longstanding law and practice, even if they had not yet obtained formal recognition.

Coordination with European Citizenship

The Court invoked the recent judgment C-181/23 of the Court of Justice (Commission v. Malta) on the genuine link, emphasizing that:

“the foundation of the citizenship bond of a Member State lies in the particular relationship of solidarity and loyalty between that State and its citizens, as well as in the reciprocity of rights and duties.“

According to the Court, Italian law, by requiring an effective connection, aligns with this European vision of citizenship.

Critical Assessment and Perspectives

Legislative Discretion

The ruling, which is however affected by way the Tribunal of Turin submitted its questions, confirms the broad discretion of the legislature in citizenship matters, already affirmed by ruling no. 142/2025 (which declared inadmissible questions on generational limits to iure sanguinis transmission) and ruling no. 25/2025 (which upheld questions on language requirement exemption for disabled persons). The Court traces a minimum perimeter of constitutional review, limited to manifest unreasonableness, but recognizes the legislature’s power to redefine the criteria for status attribution. Some scholars may question whether this degree of deference is appropriate when fundamental status questions affecting millions of people are at stake, particularly when the changes are imposed retroactively.

The Relationship Between Citizenship and Democracy

A particularly innovative aspect of the ruling is the inseparable nexus traced between citizenship and democratic participation. The Court rereads Article 1 of the Constitution (“sovereignty belongs to the people”) in light of universal suffrage, evoking a somewhat “Rousseauian” vision of the people as a community of destiny. This approach, whether one agrees with it or not, represents a paradigm shift: citizenship is no longer merely formal status but presupposes a substantial connection with the life of the Republic. While theoretically coherent, this vision may undervalue the significance of diaspora communities and their continued identification with Italian culture, language, and values across generations, connections that, while different from physical residence, are nonetheless extremely meaningful.

Who Can Still Get Italian Citizenship by Descent in 2026? Practical Implications

For Applicants and Pending Proceedings

While we are still reviewing the implications of the Court’s ruling and waiting for the results of a few upcoming decisions on the topic, the ruling seems to produce immediate consequences:

Barring alternative options, theoretical rejection of petitions/lawsuit filed after March 27, 2025, by persons not falling within Article 3-bis exceptions;
Consolidation of positions of those who (successfully) filed applications/lawsuit by the deadline.

For Descendants of Italians

In a nutshell, barring any future different rulings and different options (for instance, as a mere example: challenging in court, with all connected risks, the delay of the Italian authorities in providing for appointments to claim the applicability of the old law to one’s case), those born abroad who did not file an application/obtain an appointment/file a lawsuit by March 27, 2025, might no longer be recognized as citizens iure sanguinis, unless:

They have/had a parent/grandparent with exclusive Italian citizenship;
The parent/adoptive parent resided in Italy for at least two continuous years after acquiring citizenship and before birth/adoption.

The facilitated naturalization pathways provided by Decree no. 36/2025 remain available, though these require establishing residence in Italy, with all the connected implications (even from a taxation point of view). We recognize this is not the outcome many families hoped for, particularly those who maintained strong ties to Italy but were unable to formalize their claims before the deadline, and we are currently assessing any alternative options and monitoring the upcoming rulings.

Conclusions

While there is still a margin for changes with the applicable law, particularly with regard to upcoming rulings by the Supreme Court of Cassazione and by the same Constitutional Court, the ruling no. 63/2026 represents a watershed moment in Italian citizenship law; the Court seems to have legitimized a drastic and retroactive reform, reasoning that:

The principle of effective citizen-State connection has constitutional rank;
Unlimited iure sanguinis transmission had departed from the constitutional model;
Recipients’ expectations were weak, concerning unrecognized status;
The legislature provided adequate compensatory measures.

For legal professionals in this field, the decision requires a fundamental rethinking of defensive strategies and thorough knowledge of Article 3-bis exceptions, as well as the new facilitated naturalization procedures. For the millions of descendants of Italians worldwide, barring a different outcome of the upcoming rulings and alternative options, an era seems to be closing: Italian citizenship seems no longer a right transmissible indefinitely but appears to require an effective connection with the national community. We understand this conclusion would be profoundly disappointing for many families who cherished their Italian heritage and identity; while the Court’s reasoning has its legal coherence, legitimate questions remain about whether a more gradual transition, with greater notice and broader exceptions, might have better balanced the competing interests at stake. The constitutional framework permits legislative discretion but discretion is not unlimited and the values of legal certainty, protection of legitimate expectations and respect for family ties remain fundamental to any just legal system. Whether this balance was optimally struck is a question on which reasonable minds may differ.

We remain committed to exploring all available legal options for our clients and, while looking for alternative strategies (for instance, lawsuits challenging the objective delay of the authorities in providing for appointments in the past few years), we will continue to monitor developments in this rapidly evolving area of law. For specific advice on your case, please contact us.

Frequently Asked Questions: Italian Citizenship by Descent 2026

Can I still get Italian citizenship through my Italian ancestor in 2026?

It depends on your specific situation. As of today, barring any updates and alternative options, you may still qualify if:

You filed your application (administrative or judicial) by March 27, 2025, OR
You had a confirmed appointment scheduled by Italian authorities by March 27, 2025, OR
Your parent or grandparent holds/held only Italian citizenship (not dual citizenship), OR
Your parent/adoptive parent resided in Italy for at least 2 continuous years after acquiring citizenship and before your birth/adoption

If none of these exceptions apply, unless exceptions or alternative options apply, you might not acquire Italian citizenship by descent under the traditional jure sanguinis rules.

Does the 2025 citizenship law apply retroactively?

The Constitutional Court seems to have explicitly confirmed that Article 3-bis of Law 91/1992 applies retroactively, meaning it affects persons born before March 28, 2025. The Court found this retroactivity constitutionally legitimate despite objections about legal certainty and legitimate expectations.

What are my options if I missed the March 27, 2025 deadline?

While waiting for any different future decision on the topic, if you no longer qualify for citizenship by descent, you may consider, in a nutshell, among other options (i.e. relocating to Italy based on different permits):

1. Facilitated naturalization (residence-based):

Upon fulfillment of certain requirements and with certain limits, only 2 years of legal residence required (instead of 3) if you are descended from Italian citizens;
Among other requirements, you must establish residence in Italy and meet language/integration requirements (or exceptions).

2. Employment-based pathways:

Upon the fulfillment of certain requirements, quota-free entry for subordinate employment available for descendants of Italians from countries with historical Italian emigration

Is Italian citizenship by marriage still available?

Yes. Citizenship by marriage to an Italian citizen is not affected by the 2025 reforms.

📧 Contact us for a confidential consultation to assess your specific situation and explore all available pathways to Italian citizenship. Please be aware that the information contained in this article is provided for general informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice applicable to any specific case or individual circumstance. This analysis is limited in scope (for instance, certain topics are not even considered – for example the new procedure for minors) and does not constitute a legal opinion regarding your particular eligibility for Italian citizenship recognition or your chances of success in any citizenship application or judicial proceeding. Each citizenship case involves unique factual and legal circumstances that require individualized assessment. Furthermore, the law in this area continues to evolve and individual results may vary; past outcomes are not indicative of future results.