Newswire
Rome: Italy’s highest court this week delivered a landmark ruling reinforcing the citizenship rights of descendants of Italian emigrants, holding that children born with both Italian citizenship and another nationality do not automatically lose their Italian citizenship when a parent later acquires foreign nationality.
The decision by the Court of Cassation’s United Sections is expected to strengthen citizenship-by-descent claims for thousands of families worldwide, particularly in North and South America, where large Italian diaspora communities have ancestral ties to Italy.
The ruling resolves the long-standing legal dispute known as the “Minor Issue,” which has complicated ancestry-based citizenship applications involving families who emigrated from Italy during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The central question before the court was whether children who were already Italian citizens by birth automatically lost that citizenship when an Italian parent later became a naturalized citizen of another country while the children were still minors.
In its judgment, the court ruled that under Italy’s historical citizenship laws, children who acquired Italian citizenship at birth through the principle of iure sanguinis (citizenship by bloodline) retained their Italian nationality even after a parent’s subsequent naturalization abroad.
The court further clarified that children born in countries that automatically grant citizenship at birth, including the United States, remained Italian citizens despite their parents later obtaining foreign nationality. As a result, they retained the right to pass Italian citizenship on to future generations.
The ruling marks a significant reversal of the restrictive interpretation adopted in a series of court decisions beginning in 2023, under which many citizenship-by-descent applications were rejected because authorities considered the chain of citizenship transmission to have been broken.
Lawyer Marco Mellone, who represented the applicants, said the judgment restores citizenship rights to Italian-American families and others in countries where similar circumstances existed.
He said the Supreme Court had reversed its earlier restrictive interpretation and reaffirmed that families affected by the “Minor Issue” were once again entitled to claim Italian citizenship by descent. Mellone estimated that several hundred thousand families may have been impacted by the previous interpretation.
Legal experts believe the decision will strengthen the position of applicants whose claims were rejected solely because of the “Minor Issue” and provide authoritative guidance to judges handling pending cases. The judgment is also expected to influence how Italian administrative authorities and consulates evaluate future citizenship applications.
Although it remains unclear whether Italy’s Interior Ministry and diplomatic missions will immediately revise their procedures, decisions issued by the Court of Cassation’s United Sections are regarded as the country’s most authoritative interpretation of the law and are intended to resolve conflicting judicial opinions.
The ruling comes as Italy experiences growing demand for citizenship by descent and continues to face legal challenges over the scope of ancestry-based citizenship rights.
Separately, legislation promoted by Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani that would restrict citizenship transmission through more distant generations has been referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union, with proceedings expected to begin next year.
