Why has Italy clamped down on citizenship by descent claims?

An urgent government decree issued on Friday, March 28th has drastically tightened Italy’s citizenship by descent rules in a move that’s been described as an “act of war” against foreign-born descendants of Italians.

Under the previous system, Italy placed no generational limit on citizenship by descent claims. Anyone who could prove that they had an Italian ancestor who was alive on or after March 17th, 1861 and that no one in their line of descent had lost or renounced Italian citizenship before the birth of their child could seek Italian citizenship. 

READ ALSO: Q&A: How Italy’s rules for claiming citizenship by descent have changed

But under the latest decree, only people with an Italian parent or grandparent born in Italy, or with an Italian parent who lived in Italy for a minimum of two continuous years, will now qualify for citizenship.

Though there are no official figures yet, Friday’s decreto is believed to have stripped millions of people of the right to apply for Italian citizenship iure sanguinis.

The abrupt change in law has caused widespread disappointment and frustration among swathes of Italy’s diaspora, with an online petition calling on the Italian government to scrap the new rules gaining momentum in recent days.

As measures included in two draft laws threaten to tighten citizenship by descent rules even further in the near future, what’s behind Italy’s clampdown?

Years of ‘abuse’

Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said on Friday that the change was primarily aimed at curbing widespread “abuse” of Italy’s previous citizenship laws. 

“The granting of citizenship is a serious thing and there has been abuse [of the system] in past years,” he said. 

Tajani specifically pointed to the growing “commercialisation of Italian passports”, lamenting that the previous citizenship regime was being increasingly exploited as a route to gaining access to the EU for practical purposes including residency and travel.

Claiming Italian citizenship “can’t just be a way to get a European passport to travel,” the Forza Italia leader said.

Tajani also complained about the proliferation of private companies charging thousands of euros to help people track down their Italian ancestors and secure the vital records needed in the application process.

“We are striking down very hard against those who want to make money from the opportunity of becoming an Italian citizen,” he said.

“We cannot encourage cheating,” he said at a press conference on Friday as he held up printouts of some companies’ ads on social media.

Administrative overload

Italy has seen a boom in citizenship by descent applications in recent years, especially in Argentina and Brazil – both of which have a long history of Italian emigration.

According to foreign ministry data, 30,000 Argentine nationals were granted Italian citizenship in 2024 – up from 20,000 in 2023. As for Brazil, 20,000 people became Italian citizens in 2024 – up by 6,000 compared to 2022.

The foreign ministry has also said that the number of Italian citizens living abroad has increased by 40 percent over the past 10 years – from 4.6 million to 6.4 million.

The increase in citizenship by descent applications has strained the resources of Italy’s consulates, courts and municipal offices, leading to major backlogs and long delays, according to Italy’s government.

TELL US: Are you affected by Italy’s new citizenship by descent law?

In recent years, citizenship applicants in countries with large numbers of people with Italian ancestry, including the US, have reported waiting times of over a year for an appointment at the nearest consulate. 

Several Italian municipalities have also complained that they were being overwhelmed by hundreds of requests for documentation filed as part of citizenship applications.

Alberto Teso, the mayor of San Donà di Piave, a city near Venice, told public broadcaster RAI in February that half of his staff worked full-time on citizenship applications filed abroad.

By dramatically reducing the number of claims, Rome is hoping to alleviate the administrative burden faced by courts, consulates and comuni.

Even before the decree was issued on Friday, Italy had already made efforts to reduce citizenship applications.

In October, the Interior Ministry issued a memo enforcing a narrower interpretation of citizenship law. It said that if applicants’ Italian ancestors had voluntarily acquired a new nationality while their children were minors, those children automatically lost their Italian citizenship. That meant that the citizenship ‘chain’ had been broken.

The memo left hundreds of applicants with limited recourse, even if they had been engaged in the application process for months, or even years. 

Favouring ‘connections’ with Italy

Italy’s government said that the change in law is also part of efforts to ensure that new citizens have an “effective connection with the country of origin”. 

PM Giorgia Meloni’s coalition has long insisted that access to Italian citizenship should be restricted to individuals with “effective” ties to the country – though it’s arguably done very little to explain what this means in practice.

Earlier this year, MPs from Brothers of Italy, Forza Italia and the League filed a reform proposal in which they said that citizenship by descent laws created “mechanisms that do not consider the existence of a genuine emotional bond with Italy”, resulting in “an exponential increase” in citizens who lack “a tangible connection” with the country.

The government said that the decree issued on Friday was just the first in a series of planned measures aimed at ensuring that citizenship recognition is subject to “objective and enduring ties” to Italy. 

Under one of the two draft laws, people born abroad would have to register their birth certificates with Italian authorities before turning 25 to be able to apply for citizenship iure sanguinis later in life.

Italian citizens living abroad would also have to exercise citizen “rights and duties” including renewing their passports or voting in Italian elections at least once every 25 years in order to keep their citizenship.

What’s the background to all of this?

The abrupt change to citizenship by descent rules comes amid broader political discussions around who should be eligible for Italian citizenship.

Italy will hold a landmark referendum in early June, with Italians asked to vote on a proposal to create a quicker path to citizenship by residency (or naturalisation) by cutting the current 10-year waiting time down to five.

The Italian government has strongly opposed the easing of Italian naturalisation rules, with PM Meloni saying that she didn’t “see the need for a change” and calling the current ten-year period “appropriate”.

In recent months, the ruling coalition has also faced calls from opposition parties to introduce a form of ius soli (or ‘right of the land’) citizenship. 

Italy currently has one of Europe’s toughest citizenship regimes when it comes to children of foreign nationals born in the country. 

They must reside in Italy ‘without interruption’ until the age of 18 and submit a statement of intent to apply for citizenship within one year of their eighteenth birthday. If that time window is missed, then the only option left is to apply for citizenship by residency.

Under the ius soli principle, which is enforced by countries including the US and Canada, citizenship would be automatically granted to any child born in Italy, regardless of the parents’ nationality.

All of the above is to say that the recent changes to citizenship by descent rules are part of a very polarised political battle wherein many centre-left opposition parties are calling for looser citizenship rules, whereas the government is seeking to preserve or tighten current regulations depending on the specific case.