For more than a century, a great-grandparent’s birth certificate from a small town in Calabria or Veneto was often enough to open the door to an Italian passport. That door slammed shut for millions of people almost overnight in early 2025, and the legal fallout is still unfolding in courtrooms across Rome.
Now Italy’s highest civil court, the Corte di Cassazione, is weighing in on a related question that could reshape how far the new restrictions actually reach, even after the country’s Constitutional Court already upheld the core of the law.
The Tajani Decree and What It Actually Changed
On 28 March 2025, the Italian government adopted Decree-Law No. 36, introducing urgent measures concerning Italian citizenship, marking a radical turning point in the longstanding ius sanguinis system. The decree limits the automatic recognition of citizenship to only two generations, meaning a person born abroad is considered an Italian citizen by birth only if at least one parent or grandparent was born in Italy.
On May 20th, Italy’s Lower House gave final approval to Decree-Law 36, with 137 votes in favor and 83 against, officially ending the right to claim Italian citizenship through great-grandparents. The measure is widely known as the Tajani Decree, named after Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, and it converted into Law No. 74/2025 that May.
A System That Once Had No Generational Ceiling
Under the rules that applied from 1992 onwards, any person with Italian ancestry could apply for Italian citizenship by descent provided they could prove an unbroken line of descent from an Italian citizen after 1861, with no generational limit, meaning third, fourth, fifth, and even sixth generation descendants could apply. The only real anchor point was history itself.
While there was no generational limit for claiming citizenship jure sanguinis, the Italian-born ancestor who emigrated must have been alive on or after March 17, 1861, since anyone who died before that date was never legally an Italian citizen. This flexible approach led to estimates that over 80 million people worldwide could potentially qualify for Italian citizenship. That number alone explains why the reform landed like a shockwave.
Why Rome Says the Change Was Necessary
The government highlighted that, since national reunification, interpretations of citizenship law had allowed individuals born abroad to claim Italian citizenship without generational limits or any obligation to maintain ties with the Republic, leading to a continuously growing pool of potential Italian citizens residing outside of Italy, many of whom also hold other nationalities. Officials framed this as a matter of coherence rather than punishment.
The government warned that the absence of any genuine link to Italy among this population posed a real and current risk to national security, particularly considering Italy’s EU membership and participation in the Schengen Area, since citizenship entails access to fundamental rights within the European Union. Critics have called that reasoning thin, but it remains the government’s official justification.
The Backlash Across the Diaspora
The change sparked legal challenges and concern, particularly in South America, where an estimated 32 million Brazilians and 25 million Argentines lost eligibility by closing the door to citizenship for the world’s two largest Italian descendant communities. Community organizations in São Paulo and Buenos Aires reacted with a mix of disbelief and anger.
In the Italian Parliament, opposition lawmakers were blunt about how they saw the reform. Democratic Party deputy Nicola Carè, who represents Italians overseas, condemned the law as a deep, painful and unjust wound that weakens Italy’s bond with its diaspora. Similar frustration surfaced among Italian American advocacy groups, many of whose members had spent years and considerable savings gathering documents before the rules shifted.
The Constitutional Court’s First Word, in July 2025
Before the generational cap itself reached judges, the Constitutional Court had already weighed in on a related question about the old law. With Judgment no. 142, filed on 31 July 2025, the Italian Constitutional Court dismissed the questions of constitutionality raised by the Courts of Bologna, Rome, Milan and Florence, which had sought to place limits and additional requirements on the automatic recognition of citizenship for the children of Italians born abroad.
The Court held that it was not its task to restrict citizenship by means of a manipulative judgment that would introduce conditions not set by Parliament, and that the legislature enjoys wide discretion in determining the requirements for citizenship. That ruling effectively told judges the fix, if there was to be one, had to come from lawmakers, not the bench, setting the stage for the government’s decree eight months later.
The Constitutional Court Upholds the Tajani Decree
On 12 March 2026, the Italian Constitutional Court rejected the constitutional legitimacy challenges concerning Decree-Law No. 36/2025, converted into Law No. 74/2025, ruling that the new limitations introduced by the legislator are compatible with the Italian Constitution. The case had reached the court through a referral from the Court of Turin.
The Court reasoned that citizenship falls within the competence of Parliament, which may determine the criteria for acquisition and recognition, and emphasized that the Constitution does not require the State to recognise Italian citizenship for all descendants of Italian citizens without generational limits. The ruling upheld the generational cap on citizenship by descent introduced via emergency decree the previous year.
What the Full Written Judgment Actually Settled
The Constitutional Court ultimately issued Judgment No. 63/2026, deposited on April 30, 2026, and published on May 6, 2026, providing important clarity regarding the current legal framework governing Italian citizenship. The delay between the initial press statement and the full reasoning left applicants and lawyers in limbo for weeks.
The Constitutional Court did not issue a broad declaration that descendants born before March 28, 2025, automatically retained recognition rights under the previous legal framework, but instead largely upheld the legislature’s authority to establish new requirements, meaning the Court did not adopt the expansive interpretation sought by many opponents. The Court also rejected challenges alleging that the law arbitrarily distinguished between individuals who filed before the March 27, 2025 cutoff and those who filed afterward, and rejected arguments that the law violated European Union citizenship principles under Articles 9 TEU and 20 TFEU.
The Separate Battle Now Before the Supreme Court
While the Constitutional Court settled the broad question of the generational cap, a narrower but consequential dispute landed before the Corte di Cassazione, Italy’s supreme court for civil matters. On a Tuesday in April 2026, the Corte di Cassazione met to evaluate citizenship restrictions for descendants of Italian citizens born abroad that were imposed by the government in October 2024, the so-called minor issue, which stipulated that if a parent of an Italian child born abroad naturalized while the children were still underage, that would cut the line of descent unless it would otherwise render the child stateless.
The United Sections civil panel of the Corte di Cassazione began an evaluation of whether the government’s policy change was legal, and while the hearing was technically unrelated to the sweeping 2025 restrictions, lawyers hope a ruling on the minor issue could open the door for challenges to the broader law. The attorney for the American plaintiffs explicitly asked the court to rule on whether citizenship is a permanent right acquired at birth, which, should the court agree, would give lower courts an avenue to disregard the 2025 citizenship restrictions.
Who Still Qualifies, and Who Does Not
Under the current framework, the legal fiction that someone never acquired Italian citizenship applies retroactively, regardless of birth date, unless one of three narrow exceptions is met, including citizenship recognized before the March 2025 cutoff, a parent or grandparent who held exclusively Italian citizenship, or a parent who resided in Italy for at least two consecutive years before the applicant’s birth. Anyone tracing descent back further than a grandparent, without one of those exceptions, is now outside the automatic system entirely.
For the estimated 80 million people worldwide who claim Italian descent, the ruling narrows the picture considerably, though roughly 60,000 applicants who filed before the 27 March 2025 cutoff continue under the old unlimited-generation rules. That gap between those who filed in time and those who did not has become the sharpest dividing line in the entire dispute.
Where the Legal Fight Goes From Here
The courtroom battle is far from over, even with two major rulings already on the books. A further hearing was scheduled for June 9 at the Constitutional Court addressing the broader validity of the Tajani Decree, and if judges determine the new restrictions cannot be applied retroactively, the decision could preserve eligibility for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people across the Italian diaspora, while a ruling favoring the government would leave the limits standing as a firm boundary.
Lawyers involved in the case see limited remaining options if Italian courts continue to side with the government. Corrado Caruso, a constitutional law professor who argued against the decree at the March hearing, told CNN he believes EU courts represent the last viable avenue for descendants. If the two top courts issue conflicting rulings, those seeking citizenship could be forced to sue the government for recognition rather than going the traditional route of applying through consulates.
