Italy Sends Its Citizenship Restrictions to the European Court, and Hundreds of Thousands of Claims Come Back to Life

Italy's Constitutional Court referred the government's tightened rules on citizenship by descent to the European Court of Justice on Thursday 23 July, after an initial ruling had appeared to uphold them. The referral asks the Luxembourg court whether the restrictions are compatible with the European law that guarantees citizenship of the Union, and the rights that come with it, to anyone holding the citizenship of a member state.

Marco Mellone, the citizenship lawyer representing claimants challenging the restrictions, told The Local that the referral was a big surprise. If the European court declares the rules incompatible with EU law, he said, they will be automatically set aside by any Italian administrative authority.

The practical effect lands immediately, before any ruling. Claims that are still pending are no longer being decided against a settled rule, and claimants whose applications were already refused under the tightened test have a reason to appeal. Mellone's advice to that second group was to file at once rather than wait for Luxembourg.

What is being tested is the reform Italy introduced in March, which imposed a two generation limit: an applicant born abroad must now have a parent or grandparent who held Italian citizenship only, or held it at death, with narrow exceptions. That single line moved the boundary of who counts as Italian for a diaspora that has spent generations assuming the answer was settled.