CONSTITUTIONAL COURT REJECTS QUESTIONS CONCERNING THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF DECREE-LAW 36/2025 ON CITIZENSHIP

Pending the filing of the judgment, the Communications and Press Office announces that the Constitutional Court has declared the questions of constitutionality raised by the Court of Turin concerning Article 1 of Decree-Law No. 36 of 2025, converted into Law No. 74 of 2025, containing “Urgent provisions on citizenship,” to be partly unfounded and partly inadmissible.

Altare della Patria

This decree establishes that, by way of derogation from previous rules providing for the unlimited transmission of citizenship iure sanguinis, “anyone born abroad, even before the entry into force of this article, who holds another nationality shall be deemed never to have acquired Italian citizenship,” unless one of the following conditions applies:

a) citizenship status is recognized (administratively or judicially) following an application submitted by 11:59 p.m. on March 27, 2025;

b) a parent or grandparent possesses, or possessed at the time of their death, exclusively Italian citizenship;

c) a parent or adoptive parent has been resident in Italy for at least two continuous years after acquiring Italian citizenship and before the date of the child’s birth or adoption.

The Court declared unfounded the objections raised by the Court of Turin under Article 3 of the Constitution, which alleged, on the one handraised by the Court of Turin under Article 3 of the Constitution, the arbitrariness of the distinction between those who applied for recognition of citizenship before March 28, 2025, and those who applied afterward, and, on the other hand, the violation of acquired rights, arguing that the provision amounts to an “implicit revocation of citizenship with retroactive effect and without any transitional legal provisions.”

The Court also declared unfounded the question alleging a violation of Article 9 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) and Article 20 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), which grants EU citizenship to anyone holding the nationality of a Member State.

The Court further declared inadmissible the question alleging a violation of Article 15, paragraph 2, of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, according to which “no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of their nationality nor denied the right to change nationality.”

Finally, the Court declared inadmissible the question alleging a violation of Article 3, paragraph 2, of the Fourth Additional Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), according to which “no one shall be deprived of the right to enter the territory of the State of which they are a national.”

Rome, March 12, 2026