Italian Citizenship Blog

When the Court of Cassation restores citizenship to its fundamental principles, brings the "Minor Issue" to an end, and challenges the foundations of the Tajani Law

Order No. 147/2026 of the Italian Constitutional Court marks a turning point in the debate over Italy's new citizenship legislation. By its decision of 9 June, published on 23 July, the Court stayed the proceedings concerning the challenge to the constitutionality of Article 3-bis of Law No. 91/1992 and referred a preliminary question to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).

The most significant aspect of Tajani’s remarks is not the contradiction itself, but the stratification of Italian identity that emerges from them. Italian citizenship, historically based on the principle of jus sanguinis, has long recognized a legal bond independent of language proficiency, economic status, or degree of cultural integration. Yet the minister’s words appear to establish a hierarchy of legitimacy among citizens who are formally equal before the law.

Corrado Caruso’s intervention operates on two complementary levels. On the one hand, it advances a human-centered and rights-protective argument designed to ensure that Italian descendants abroad are not penalized for circumstances beyond their control. On the other, it presents a broader constitutional and institutional argument inviting the Constitutional Court to examine whether the Government lawfully relied upon emergency legislative powers to implement a structural reform of citizenship law. It is precisely the combination of these two perspectives—the protection of individuals and the defense of constitutional principles—that gives Caruso’s submission its particular persuasive force. As in Euripides’ metaphor, the underlying question is whether constitutional law should merely observe a seemingly completed fate, or whether, like Heracles in Alcestis, it may still intervene to prevent a loss from becoming final and irreversible.

Marco Mellone Challenges the Constitutional Court: “Judges Speak Through Their Judgments, Not Through Press Releases” During the hearing held on June 9 before the Italian Constitutional Court concerning the constitutional challenges to the so-called “Tajani Law,” referred by the Courts of Mantua and Campobasso, attorney Marco Mellone delivered a forceful and uncompromising argument in defense of the rule of law, legal certainty, and the fundamental rights of Italian citizens by descent. In a speech marked by both legal rigor and institutional candor, Mellone openly criticized aspects of Constitutional Court Judgment No. 63/2026, questioned the retroactive effects of the challenged legislation, and urged the Court to reflect upon its constitutional duty to safeguard fundamental rights. Below is an English transcription of the most significant portions of his intervention:

The First Civil Section of the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation (Corte Suprema di Cassazione), presided over by Justice Maria Acierno, issued Order No. 13818/2026, a decision of extraordinary legal significance concerning the recognition of Italian citizenship jure sanguinis and the effective judicial protection of individuals confronted with the structural dysfunctions of the Italian consular system. The Court first reaffirmed that the right to Italian citizenship constitutes an absolute subjective right of primary constitutional rank, arising simultaneously with the birth of its holder, possessing a permanent and imprescriptible character, and not depending upon any administrative grant or concession.

The Constitutional Court implicitly and spontaneously acknowledges the existence of a distinct category of individuals who attempted to exercise their right but were unable to complete the process due to circumstances beyond their control, including the material impossibility of securing a consular appointment, the collapse of the “Prenotami” system, excessive waiting lists, or the unavailability of appointments at Italian consulates.

Judgment no. 63/2026 upholds this legislative framework and marks a turning point in the Italian legal system concerning citizenship by descent. It introduces and consolidates the doctrine of the so-called “effective or genuine link”, thereby justifying — more in political than strictly legal terms — the contested legislative amendments.

Just 24 hours after the hearing, Italy’s Constitutional Court announced that it had rejected the constitutional challenge brought by the Turin Court against the so-called Tajani Citizenship Law, the reform that radically reshaped the system for recognizing Italian citizenship by descent. According to the brief press release issued by the Court, the objections raised by the Turin judge were deemed partly “unfounded” and partly “inadmissible What the Court released is merely an announcement of the outcome. It does not contain the legal reasoning behind the decision. In other words, we know the ending of the first act, but not how the story arrived there.

While the legal community awaits the hearing scheduled for 11 March before the Italian Constitutional Court, convened after the Tribunal of Turin raised a question of constitutional legitimacy concerning the new provisions of the so-called Tajani Law, the majority of judicial authorities have adopted a position of procedural prudence. In practice, this has meant ordering the suspension of pending proceedings until the Constitutional Court—Italy’s highest interpreter of the Constitution—determines whether the contested legislation is compatible with the constitutional order. Against this backdrop, the Tribunal of Palermo has recently issued decisions reflecting two apparently divergent interpretative approaches. This development has reignited the debate regarding the continuing legal relevance of the so-called “endless waitlist” cases notwithstanding the formal entry into force of the new statutory framework.

The hearing in the so-called Mantua Case has been officially scheduled for June 9, 2026 before the Constitutional Court, marking one of the most significant chapters in the current constitutional litigation concerning Italian citizenship. Attorney María Stella La Malfa, representing the petitioners in this second constitutional proceeding, has emphasized a fundamental distinction between the Turin and Mantua cases. While both share a common core — the amendment introduced by Article 3 bis and its projected retroactive application — the Mantua case advances a considerably broader constitutional ambition.

The so-called Tajani Law appears to have entered its definitive terminal phase. Two new rulings issued by the Court of Campobasso, delivered almost simultaneously on 5 and 6 February, have referred further questions of constitutional illegitimacy to the Italian Constitutional Court, significantly intensifying judicial pressure upon a legislative framework that, from its very inception, was born under suspicion. The Campobasso cases are particularly significant because they concern actions initiated after the conversion of Decree-Law 36 into Law no. 74. This grants the constitutional referrals absolute pertinence: there can be no doubt that the Tajani Law is the applicable norm in the concrete cases, an element of fundamental importance in the Constitutional Court’s assessment.

The main novelty introduced by the 2026 Budget Law consists of the extension of the deadline for submitting the declaration: the parents of minors born after the entry into force of the Tajani Law — at least one of whom must be an Italian citizen by birth — now have three years, instead of one, from the child’s birth, or from the subsequent establishment of filiation, including adoption, to submit the declaration provided for under Article 4, paragraph 1-bis, letter (b), of Law No. 91/1992. In addition, such declarations are now exempt from fees. Accordingly, the €250 administrative fee previously required under Article 9-bis of Law No. 91/1992 is no longer applicable.

It is currently estimated that more than 70,000 citizenship-related judicial proceedings are pending throughout Italy, a figure that clearly reveals a deep-rooted and long-standing structural problem. The most striking aspect is the extraordinary concentration of cases in a limited number of courts. The Court of Venice alone accounts for approximately 30,000 proceedings, while the Court of Brescia handles around 6,000. The situation of the Court of Venice is widely regarded as a true anomaly. The cause does not lie in its internal functioning, but rather in a poorly designed reform of territorial jurisdiction, which failed to foresee that a single court could become overwhelmed by such a massive volume of cases. Pressure to accelerate judicial proceedings has intensified with the PNRR – National Recovery and Resilience Plan, adopted during the pandemic as part of a broader European Union program.

On Monday, 24 November, the Official Gazette published the decree entitled: “Identification of the States of destination of significant flows of Italian emigration whose citizens, if they are descendants of Italian citizens, may enter and remain in Italy for employment in a subordinate capacity outside the quotas provided for in Article 3, paragraph 4, of Legislative Decree 286/1998.” Dated 17 November, the decree is signed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Antonio TaUnder the new decree, Argentina, Brazil, the United States, Australia, Canada, Venezuela, and Uruguay are the countries from which these descendants may come to Italy to work.jani, together with the Ministers of the Interior, Piantedosi, and of Labour, Calderone.The structural paradox: those who were Italians by right must now apply as foreigners

A recent decision from the Court of Verona, issued on October 29 by Judge Cristina Pezzini, has set a powerful precedent in the matter of citizenship transcription. The municipality of Castagnaro had failed to comply with an order to register the Italian citizenship of three Brazilian applicants who had obtained recognition iuris sanguinis through a ruling issued by the Court of Rome in December 2023. As a result, the Verona court ordered the transcription within 15 days, imposing a 100-euro daily fine for each day of delay.

Judge Fabrizio Alessandria, by order of 25 June 2025, has raised before the Constitutional Court the possible unconstitutionality of the new citizenship regime. Order No. 167 crystallises a powerful proposition: where the legal system recognises a descendant as a citizen from birth, subsequent legislation cannot retroactively erase that status without colliding with constitutional principles (reasonableness, equality, legitimate expectations), EU law (proportionality and protection of EU citizenship), and international human rights norms (prohibition of arbitrary deprivation of nationality). The significance of the ruling lies in its sophisticated, multi-layered reasoning, which interweaves domestic “living law” (Supreme Court Joint Chambers), constitutional doctrine on retroactivity and legal certainty, and EU standards governing the loss of nationality.

It is the State that must demonstrate an interruption in the transmission of citizenship. In this case, the Ministry of the Interior did not prove that the ancestor had definitively renounced his status as subject. The Court of Appeals of Genoa reinforces this principle, affirming that, since it concerns a fundamental right, it is not admissible to invert the burden of proof through the fiction of a “probatio diabolica”. Emigration prior to the unification of Italy does not imply, by itself, the loss of citizenship

"The Court noted clear doubts about the constitutional legitimacy of the provision in question, which introduces a hypothesis of deprivation of citizenship status already acquired by a person born abroad to an Italian mother. “This constitutes an automatic ex tunc loss of citizenship — or rather, a form of implicit revocation — for all those who, born before the entry into force of the decree in question, had already acquired, by virtue of their birth to an Italian citizen, the substantive ownership of the status civitatis.”

Judicial proceedings for the recognition of Italian citizenship originated from the so-called “1948 cases”, intended to remedy gender-based discrimination in the transmission of citizenship. Over time, this judicial path has evolved into a legitimate legal remedy against the persistent “infinite waiting lists” at Italian consulates. With the entry into force of Law No. 74/2025 (the Tajani Law), the debate has expanded to encompass potential issues of unconstitutionality, paving the way for new legal interpretations and defense strategies. Since the administrative route has been restricted rather than restructured, a significant increase in the judicialization of Italian citizenship applications is anticipated.

On 31 July 2025, the Italian Constitutional Court published Judgment No. 142/2025, which addressed the constitutional challenges raised by the Courts of Bologna, Rome, Milan, and Florence, primarily concerning Article 1 of Law No. 91 of 1992—that is, the legal framework in force prior to the current Law No. 74, which emerged from the controversial Tajani Decree of 28 February. Although the Court has not yet ruled directly on Law No. 74/2025, it has drawn very clear red lines that seriously question its future constitutionality, as the foundations upon which this reform rests appear to be in direct conflict with the founding values of the Italian constitutional order.

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