English 
French This week brought another helping of bad news for many people looking at acquiring Italian citizenship after the 2025 reform. On 12 March 2026, Italy’s Constitutional Court issued a press statement announcing that it had rejected the main constitutional challenges to the government’s 2025 citizenship reform. The full judgment has not yet been published, but the Court’s summary already provides important clarity on how the new rules will be interpreted. For thousands of people of Italian descent hoping to obtain citizenship, the ruling significantly narrows expectations about what might change.
Italy’s Citizenship Reform Reaches the Constitutional Court
The 2025 reform, introduced through Decree-Law 36/2025 and later converted into Law 74/2025, dramatically restricted Italy’s traditional ius sanguinis system. For more than a century, Italian citizenship could be transmitted indefinitely through bloodline, allowing descendants of emigrants—even many generations later—to claim citizenship if they could prove the lineage. The new law effectively ended that open-ended system, introducing several strict conditions and a firm application deadline..
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What the Constitutional Court Actually Decided
The Constitutional Court’s announcement now suggests that the core architecture of that reform will stand:
- The first major takeaway is that the Court has upheld the legality of the reform itself. The judges declared the constitutional objections raised by the Turin court either “unfounded” or “inadmissible.” In simple terms, the Court did not find the law unconstitutional. That means the restrictions introduced by the 2025 reform remain fully in force for now.
- A second crucial point concerns the retroactive nature of the law. One of the most controversial aspects of the reform is that it states that people born abroad who already possess another citizenship are considered never to have acquired Italian citizenship, unless they fall within specific exceptions. Critics argued this amounted to an implicit revocation of citizenship with retroactive effect. The Constitutional Court rejected this argument. In doing so, it effectively confirmed that Parliament can redefine, even retroactively, who is legally considered to have been an Italian citizen under the law.
- The Court also endorsed the government’s decision to introduce a strict cut-off date. The law protected individuals who had already applied for recognition of citizenship before 27 March 2025, allowing their cases to proceed under the previous rules. Those who applied after that deadline must comply with the new restrictions. The Turin court argued that this distinction was arbitrary and violated the constitutional principle of equality. The Constitutional Court disagreed, confirming that the deadline is legally valid.
Why European and International Law Did Not Block the Reform
Another challenge focused on European Union law. Since EU citizenship is automatically derived from citizenship of a member state, opponents of the reform argued that stripping Italian citizenship from descendants abroad could improperly deprive them of EU citizenship rights. The Constitutional Court rejected this claim as unfounded, effectively affirming that individual member states retain broad authority to define who qualifies as their nationals.
The judges also declined to consider arguments based on international human rights law. Claims that the reform violated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the European Convention on Human Rights were declared inadmissible in this case.
What This Means for Citizenship Applicants
Taken together, these findings represent a significant setback for those who hoped the Constitutional Court might dismantle the 2025 reform.
For prospective applicants, the practical framework now looks much clearer. People who submitted citizenship applications before the March 2025 deadline remain protected and should continue under the previous rules. However, individuals applying after that date must fall within one of the new eligibility categories established by the reform.
These include cases where a parent or grandparent held exclusively Italian citizenship, where a parent obtained Italian citizenship and then lived in Italy for at least two continuous years before the child’s birth, or where recognition had already been requested before the cut-off date. Anyone born abroad who already holds another citizenship and does not meet these conditions is now legally treated as never having acquired Italian citizenship through descent.
In practical terms, this ruling confirms that Italy’s long-standing policy of unlimited generational transmission of citizenship has largely come to an end.
What Comes Next
That said, the legal story is not completely finished. The Constitutional Court has only issued a press release summarising its decision; the full judgment will provide more detailed reasoning and may clarify how the law should be interpreted in specific cases. In addition, several other legal challenges related to the 2025 reform are still working their way through the courts and will reach the Constitutional Court in the coming months.
Those cases may address different legal questions and could still produce adjustments to how the reform is applied. However, the Court’s latest decision establishes a strong backdrop for those future rulings. For now, it signals that Italy’s highest court is prepared to give Parliament considerable latitude in reshaping the country’s citizenship laws.
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