International
Italy Closes Ancestry Citizenship Door
Italy has tightened its citizenship-by-descent rules, limiting eligibility to those with an Italian parent or grandparent and abruptly excluding many long‑running applicants abroad. A pending supreme court decision may determine whether the new law applies retroactively, potentially reopening access for thousands, especially in the US.
Italy’s government has sharply restricted access to citizenship by ancestry, cutting off a pathway that for decades allowed descendants of Italian emigrants to apply under the principle of ius sanguinis. Since May 2025, eligibility has been limited to people with an Italian parent or grandparent who was an Italian citizen at birth and did not hold another nationality, effectively ending claims based on more distant ancestry. The change, backed by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s administration, was justified as a way to curb abuses, reduce heavy administrative backlogs, and reserve citizenship for those deemed to have a genuine connection to the country. It has had immediate consequences for thousands of applicants, particularly in the United States, Brazil, and Argentina, where large Italian diasporas trace their roots to 19th- and early‑20th‑century migration. Some Americans already deep into costly, multi‑year application processes were abruptly excluded, prompting legal challenges that argue the law should not apply retroactively. While Italy’s constitutional court has upheld the law’s validity, the supreme court is now being asked to clarify its scope, with the potential to reopen the door for applicants whose claims arose before the change. The dispute highlights longstanding tensions in Italy’s citizenship policy: a restrictive approach both to children born in Italy to immigrant parents and to descendants of emigrants abroad, even as the country faces steep demographic decline and an aging population.
SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN
