An IMGW Feature Article by Audra De Falco
On May 24, 2025, the Italian government delivered a devastating blow to millions of people of Italian descent worldwide.
President Sergio Mattarella signed into law what started as Deputy Prime Minister Antonio Tajani’s Decreto n. 36/2025, now officially known as Law 74/2025. This sweeping legislation has fundamentally rewritten over a century of established Italian citizenship law, and its consequences are far-reaching.
“The families who were encouraged to leave Italy, whose remittances exceeded Italy’s tax revenues, whose sacrifice built modern Italy, are now being told their DESCENDENTS are no longer welcome as citizens”
This law represents more than just a legal change. It is a betrayal of Italy’s own historical emigration policies and the sacrifices made by Italian emigrants who literally built the modern Italian state with their remittances.
For generations, Italian citizenship by descent (jure sanguinis) operated under clear, predictable rules. If your Italian ancestor was alive after Italian unification in 1861 and hadn’t naturalized as a foreign citizen before their child’s birth, you likely qualified for Italian citizenship. These straightforward criteria connected the Italian diaspora to their homeland for more than 100 years.
The new law has changed everything.
Under Law 74/2025, you can only claim Italian citizenship at birth if:
- Your Italian-born or adopted parent lived in Italy for at least two years, OR
- Your Italian-born grandparent never obtained citizenship in any other country
This represents a complete reversal of established precedent, effectively cutting off citizenship pathways for countless individuals who were legally Italian citizens just weeks ago.
The Historical IronyβItaly Once Encouraged Mass Emigration
To understand just how hypocritical this new law is, we need to examine Italy’s own emigration history. For over six decades following unification in 1861, the Italian government didn’t just tolerate mass emigration. It actively encouraged it as official state policy.
Between 1880 and 1915 alone, 13 million Italians left their homeland in the largest voluntary emigration in recorded history. Between 1861 and 1929, 16 million Italians left their homeland, and this wasn’t happening despite government policy. It was happening because of government policy.
Italy’s Government Saw Emigration as the Solution to Economic Problems
The “Silver Bridge” where postcards with pasted silver bars were sent to Italy to help its government establish a credit institution.
The predominant view was that mass emigration was fatalistically necessary to relieve the South from unemployment; moreover, thanks to remittances, emigration was beneficial for the country. The Italian government explicitly framed emigration as “a way to solve” the “Questione meridionale” (Southern Question), the chronic poverty and underdevelopment of Southern Italy.
Rather than invest in developing the South, politicians argued that “there was nothing that the Government could do to help the cause because, in fact, the South could not be helped.” The solution? Send the people abroad and let their money flow back to Italy.
Copper postcard sent to Italy to alleviate shortages of materials imposed by sanctions.
Remittances Were the Financial Backbone of the Italian State
Here’s the most shocking fact: in the first 15 years of the twentieth century, the amount of remittances from abroad annually exceeded the revenue from direct taxes charged by the Italian state.
Let that sink in.
Italian emigrants abroad were sending more money back to Italy than the Italian government was collecting in taxes from people living in Italy. Remittances were considered a true national asset, crucial to Italian economic integration in the international capitalistic system.
In reality, the official count of remittances is probably undervalued as only the Banco di Napoli was tasked with an official count. The actual total was likely much higher.
Remittances from 1903
Emigration as “Patriotic Duty”
The Italian state considered emigration patriotic duty, encouraging it so that its benefits could be maximized and its disrupting effects contained. In other words, emigration was in the national interest.
Emigrants were expected to maintain their Italian identity and contribute to Italy’s development from abroad. That is why Italian law specifically strengthened Italy’s ties with its diaspora, giving emigrants’ children (and consequently, their children, and so on) sweeping rights to claim Italian citizenship from birth to explicitly maintain ties with the homeland.
As many of these migrants would have returned with money and newly acquired skills, their enriching experience would have contributed to the cultural modernization of Italian society. Italian law at that time conferred their children born abroad with citizenship at birth so as to maintain the family unit.
The Ultimate Betrayal
Now, over a century later, the Italian government is systematically severing ties with the descendants of the very people who financially sustained the Italian state during its most critical period. The families who were encouraged to leave Italy, whose remittances exceeded Italy’s tax revenues, whose sacrifice built modern Italy, are now being told their descendants are no longer welcome as citizens.
The Real Story Behind the Tajani Decree: Manufactured Crisis, Real Discrimination
Before we examine any potential constitutional violations, it’s crucial to understand why this draconian law came to exist. Deputy Prime Minister Tajani and the Italian government have offered several justifications for this emergency decree-turned law, none of which hold up to scrutiny.
The “Security Risk” Myth
The government cited potential national security risks, claiming that granting citizenship to large numbers of people without verified connections to Italy poses a threat. Officials argued that citizens without “effective ties” to Italy could eventually outnumber the population living in Italy, creating a national security risk.
This reasoning is absurd on multiple levels. First, according to Italy’s own numbers, only around 25,000 people of the diaspora were recognized as citizens in 2023, the last year for which data is available. Out of 16+ million Americans with Italian ancestry (not to mention the many tens of millions of Brazilians, Argentineans, and others), this represents an extremely small percentage. The government is claiming a “crisis” over recognizing fewer than 0.2% of eligible Italian descendants annually.
Let’s be clear: Italian Americans have never been, and never will be, a security risk to Italy. This is a community that has maintained deep cultural connections to Italy for generations, sent billions in remittances to support Italian families, and continues to be Italy’s strongest cultural ambassadors worldwide. The suggestion that people of Italian descent pose a “national security risk” is unfounded.
The Fraud Excuse: A Drop in the Ocean
Yes, there have been cases of document fraud in citizenship applications. These represent an infinitesimally small percentage of total applications, a drop in the bucket that hardly justifies dismantling over a century of established law. According to ISTAT (the Italian National Institute of Statistics), only 12% of new Italian citizens in 2023 (about 26,421 out of 211,567) were people claiming citizenship through ancestry.
Even if every single one of these cases involved fraud (which they didn’t), we’re talking about a tiny fraction of citizenship cases. The government’s response is like burning down the entire forest to eliminate a few diseased trees.
The Real Culprit: Government Bureaucratic Incompetence
Here’s what actually created this “crisis”: the Italian government’s own systematic failure to provide adequate consular services. For years, Italian consulates worldwide have been chronically understaffed and overwhelmed, creating massive backlogs and unconscionable wait times.
The Appointment Crisis
Consulate appointment waiting times in the U.S. can be between 24-36 months, once you can actually get an appointment, that is. It is not uncommon to try for a year or more to find an open slot. There are exceptions, of course: waiting periods vary, depending on the consulate and how many applications they are processing. In some jurisdictions, the situation is even worse, such as Los Angeles, where they are currently scheduling new appointments in 2029, or New York, where there is an 8,000+ person waiting list.
Legal Action Became Necessary
The government’s incompetence forced citizenship applicants to hire attorneys and sue consulates for failing to provide timely service. By law, the Italian Ministry of the Interior’s waiting and processing times should not exceed 24 months.
Therefore, all applicants who tried to get an appointment that was farther in time than 730 days, or those who can prove to have made reasonable attempts to get an appointment in vain, had a legitimate claim in court to obtain citizenship.
The Government Created Its Own Problem
Italian courts have consistently ruled in favor of applicants, finding that consulates that don’t give appointments violate the right to claim Italian citizenship by descent. The success rate is extremely high as the case law is very solid. Courts routinely grant citizenship recognition for “consulate delay.”
Yet instead of fixing their broken consular system, hiring adequate staff, or implementing efficient processes, the government chose the nuclear option: eliminating the rights of millions of people to avoid having to do their jobs properly.
The Scapegoating Strategy: Using the Diaspora to Avoid Real Citizenship Reform
Perhaps most cynically, this law represents a calculated political scapegoating of the Italian diaspora to avoid addressing Italy’s own draconian citizenship laws for children born and raised in Italy.
Italy has one of the most restrictive birthright citizenship policies in Europe. According to the 1992 law, a child born in Italy to foreign parents is not entitled to Italian citizenship at birth unless the child would otherwise be stateless (for example, if the parents are unknown or have no citizenship to pass on). According to Italian law, those born to non-citizen parents can acquire citizenship if they were born in Italy, have had uninterrupted residence until turning 18, and have submitted a statement of intent within one year of their eighteenth birthday.
This means there are hundreds of thousands of children who were born in Italy, raised in Italy, attended Italian schools, speak Italian as their native language, and consider themselves Italian. They cannot obtain citizenship until they turn 18 and navigate a complex bureaucratic process. Many of these children have never lived anywhere else and have no real connection to their parents’ countries of origin.
The False Comparison
Political lobbies supporting citizenship reform have found the perfect scapegoat in the Italian diaspora. They argue: “See? This person can get citizenship if they have a great-grandparent born in Italy, a child born in Italy can’t?” This creates a false narrative that makes diaspora citizenship rights appear unfair compared to the situation of children born in Italy.
Now, there is a new proposal in Parliament named Ius Italiae. The proposal states that individuals born in Italy or those who arrive before age five, having resided for at least 10 years, can obtain citizenship at age 16 if they complete the mandatory schooling cycle. In particular, it states that a child born in Italy to foreign parents that has legal residence and has also regularly attended school for at least one academic cycle for a minimum of five years can acquire Italian citizenship at the request of the parents.
This reform has been stalled for years, not because of the diaspora, because of Italy’s own political resistance to expanding citizenship rights.
The Diaspora Isn’t the Problem; Italy’s Political Will Is
The diaspora is not the cause of Italy’s draconian laws regarding citizenship at birth. If Italy had the political will to give these children citizenship a decade ago, they would have done it. The problems with Italy’s citizenship laws for children born in Italy are entirely separate from jure sanguinis citizenship by descent.
Despite the sporting achievements of many young athletes who were born in Italy to migrant parents or who arrived in the country at a very early age (which could in theory be used to prove their contribution to society and to encourage support for their citizenship on the part of the general public), and despite recent activism by second generation migrant citizens, the issue resurfaces only periodically in the public debate and is always contentious. Generally speaking, reform is not yet perceived as a political priority and the most recent attempt to secure it was stopped at the Senate.
“In Italy, laws with retroactive effect cannot be approved…
Deputy Prime Minister Tajani
You cannot change the cards while the game is in play.”
The Real Timeline
Thirty years after the adoption of the current citizenship law in 1992, debate around its reformation feels never-ending. During the last 20 years, several attempts to reform it have failed. The Italian government has had three decades to fix this problem and has chosen not to.
Instead of addressing their own discriminatory policies toward children born in Italy, they’ve decided to eliminate the rights of Italian descendants worldwide.
The Bottom Line
This law wasn’t created to address security concerns or prevent fraud. It was created because the Italian government failed to adequately fund and staff its consular services, got sued repeatedly for violating citizens’ rights, and decided it was easier to eliminate those rights than fulfill their obligations.
Why This Law Can Be Successfully Challenged
The good news is that Law 74/2025 is built on fundamentally shaky legal ground. While the Italian government may have the political will to pass this legislation, they don’t have the constitutional authority to make it stick. Our legal analysis reveals multiple fatal flaws that make this law vulnerable to successful court challenges.
The Italian Constitution, European human rights law, and over a century of established legal precedent all work in favor of those whose citizenship rights have been attacked. More importantly, the Italian legal system has robust mechanisms for challenging unconstitutional laws, and we intend to use every single one of them.
The path forward is to mount a comprehensive legal offensive that exposes this law’s fundamental violations of Italy’s own constitutional principles.
Why This Law Violates Italy’s Own Constitution
Our legal team has conducted an extensive analysis of Law 74/2025, and we firmly believe it violates multiple provisions of the Italian Constitution. Here’s why this legislation cannot stand:
Constitutional Equality Violations
The law creates an arbitrary distinction between Italian citizens based purely on where they happened to be born. Under Article 3 of the Italian Constitution, all citizens must be treated equally before the law. By stripping citizenship from those born abroad while protecting those born in Italy, the law violates this fundamental principle without any rational justification.
Retroactive Application is Prohibited
Perhaps most egregiously, this law attempts to retroactively revoke citizenship that people already possessed. The Italian Constitution, supported by decades of Constitutional Court precedent and European Court of Human Rights jurisprudence, strictly prohibits laws that retroactively harm citizens’ rights. As Deputy Prime Minister Tajani himself stated in a Radio 24 interview: “In Italy, laws with retroactive effect cannot be approved… You cannot change the cards while the game is in play.”
Due Process Rights Under Attack
The legislation severely restricts the types of evidence that can be used in citizenship proceedings, effectively denying people their constitutional right to a fair defense. Articles 24 and 111 of the Constitution guarantee the right to present evidence and mount an adequate legal defense, rights that this law directly undermines.
International Treaty Violations
Italy has signed numerous international agreements protecting the right to nationality, including the European Convention on Nationality. By automatically stripping citizenship without individual assessment or proper procedures, Italy risks violating its international obligations and exposing itself to condemnation by the European Court of Human Rights.
The Core Legal Reality: Citizenship by Descent is a Birth Right
It’s crucial to understand that Italian citizenship by descent isn’t a government benefit that can be arbitrarily revoked. As the Italian Supreme Court definitively ruled in 2009, citizenship acquired through jure sanguinis is “an original right that arises at birth” and is obtained “automatically by birth from an Italian citizen, without the need for any formal declaration.”
Thus, Italian citizenship isn’t a privilege the government grants. It is a legal status conferred automatically at birth.
How to Fight for Your Rights
Many Italian lawyers are mounting a comprehensive challenge to Law 74/2025 on multiple fronts.
Constitutional Court Challenge
As of the date of publishing of this article, there are detailed constitutional challenges that will directly confront this law’s fundamental violations of Italian constitutional principles. Numerous Italian attorneys have identified specific provisions that clearly conflict with established constitutional doctrine, and we’re building the strongest possible cases we can.
European Court of Human Rights Appeals
Given Italy’s apparent violation of international treaty obligations, attorneys are also preparing appeals to the European Court of Human Rights. This court has consistently protected citizenship rights against arbitrary government interference, and it is believed that Law 74/2025 represents exactly the type of overreach the court was designed to prevent.
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Audra De Falco is one of the worldβs foremost experts on citizenship by descent. Having built her practice since 2003, she has put European passports in the hands of more than 2,000 clients. Today, she is Director of Citizenship by Descent for Latitude World, a boutique citizenship and residency consulting firm.
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