Update Constitutional Court Regarding Decree-Law No. 36/2025 - Turin Court question -

Pending the publication of the full judgment, the Press and Communications Office of the Italian Constitutional Court has announced that the Court has declared partly unfounded and partly inadmissible the questions of constitutional legitimacy raised by the Court of Turin concerning Article 1 of Decree-Law No. 36 of 2025, converted into Law No. 74 of 2025, entitled “Urgent provisions on citizenship.”

The decree provides that, by way of derogation from the previous rules allowing unlimited transmission of Italian citizenship iure sanguinis, a person born abroad—even before the entry into force of the provision—who holds another citizenship shall be deemed never to have acquired Italian citizenship, unless one of the following conditions applies:

a) the status of Italian citizen has already been recognized, either 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 death, exclusively Italian citizenship;

c) a parent or adoptive parent resided in Italy for at least two continuous years after acquiring Italian citizenship and prior to the birth or adoption of the child.

The Constitutional Court declared unfounded the objections raised by the Court of Turin under Article 3 of the Italian Constitution. These objections concerned, on the one hand, the alleged arbitrariness of the distinction between individuals who submitted their citizenship applications before March 28, 2025 and those who submitted them after that date, and, on the other hand, the alleged violation of vested rights, arguing that the provision would result in an implicit revocation of citizenship with retroactive effect and without any intertemporal regulation.

The Court also declared unfounded the question raised with reference to Article 9 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) and Article 20 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), which establish that Union citizenship derives from the nationality of a Member State.

Furthermore, the Court declared inadmissible the question raised with reference to Article 15(2) of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which provides that “no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.”

Finally, the Court declared inadmissible the question raised with reference to Article 3(2) of the Fourth Additional Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which provides that “no one shall be deprived of the right to enter the territory of the State of which he is a national.”

At this stage, it is necessary to await the publication of the full reasoning of the judgment in order to understand the precise legal grounds upon which the Court based its decision.

Moreover, two additional hearings are scheduled in which the Constitutional Court will examine further questions of constitutional legitimacy concerning the same provision. These questions were referred by the Courts of Mantova and Campobasso. The first hearing is scheduled for June, while the date of the second has not yet been set.

It should also be noted that Article 1 could still be declared unconstitutional on other grounds that have not yet been raised by the referring courts.

In addition, the issue of “1948 cases” likely remains open. In such cases, the application of the new rule could still, in the opinion of the undersigned, give rise to a violation of the constitutional principle of non-discrimination based on gender, as provided for by Article 3 of the Italian Constitution.

For this reason, eligibility must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, and it should be understood that a risk of rejection may still exist in certain circumstances.