Italian Citizenship Hope Revived as New Legal Challenge Offers Lifeline to Applicants Worldwide
Italy’s Constitutional Court published Order No. 147/2026 on July 23, halting three pending domestic cases and referring a core legal question to the Court of Justice of the European Union. The move affects families in Argentina, Brazil and elsewhere who are seeking Italian citizenship by descent under rules tightened in 2025.
The order stems from three referrals filed by lower courts in Mantua and Campobasso on behalf of a Brazilian minor and adult claimants from Argentina and Brazil, all descendants of Italian emigrants who never gave up their Italian nationality. The cases challenge Article 3-bis of Italy’s citizenship law, a provision added by Decree-Law No. 36 of 2025 and later converted into Law No. 74 of 2025, which imposed generational limits and a March 27, 2025, cutoff date on recognition claims.
The Constitutional Court had already upheld the core of that law once, in Judgment No. 63/2026, issued in March. In that ruling, the court found the restrictions compatible with the Italian Constitution and concluded that European case law on citizenship loss did not apply, reasoning that applicants without formal recognition never held a legally certain status.
Order No. 147/2026 does not overturn that judgment, but it sends a closely related question to Luxembourg whether Article 9 of the Treaty on European Union and Art. 20 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union prevent a national law from permanently blocking citizenship recognition for people born abroad before the law took effect.
Preclusion Than Revocation of Citizenship
The Constitutional Court described the domestic provision as creating an “original preclusion” rather than a revocation of citizenship but acknowledged that the interpretation of EU citizenship rights falls under the exclusive authority of the European Union’s top court.
The referral followed oral arguments at a June 9 hearing in Rome, where an attorney representing private parties in one of the Campobasso cases presented a job offer from another EU member state as evidence that the citizenship denial was blocking a client’s right to free movement within the bloc.
The case now shifts from Italian domestic courts to the European Union’s highest judicial body, which has final authority over questions of EU citizenship law. If the European court finds that the 2025 restrictions conflict with EU treaty provisions on citizenship, Italian courts and administrative offices would be legally required to set the restrictions aside for cases falling within the scope of EU law.
The outcome could restore eligibility for descendants who were cut off by the 2025 changes, particularly those born abroad before the law’s cutoff date who hold citizenship of another country.
The order does not resolve every open question. It leaves untouched separate disputes over applicants who sought consular appointments before the March 2025 cutoff but were unable to secure one, as well as cases involving ancestors who held only Italian citizenship. Those issues remain subject to separate proceedings.
Italian trial courts handling active citizenship claims under the 2025 law now have grounds to pause their own proceedings while the European court’s case moves forward. Preliminary rulings before the EU’s top court typically take between 12 and 18 months, meaning a final answer is unlikely before late 2027 or 2028.
Until then, the underlying 2025 restrictions remain in force domestically, and individual eligibility will continue to depend on the specific circumstances of each applicant’s ancestry.
