The global battle for Italian citizenship rights just got a potential lifeline

By Julia Buckley, CNN

(CNN) — Italy sent shockwaves through its global diaspora in March 2025 when the government introduced a sweeping new law which placed a strict two-generation cap on citizenship by descent.

Overnight, millions of descendants around the world — many of whom had already spent thousands of dollars on family research and legal fees — saw their path to a European passport completely blocked.

But following an apparent judicial U-turn this week, the high-stakes battle to overturn the controversial legislation has officially restarted.

Initially, Italy’s Constitutional Court upheld the strict law, known as L74/2025, leaving applicants devastated as hundreds of lawsuits challenging the ban were dismissed.

However, after re-scrutinizing the legislation, the court performed an about-face. It has now suspended the latest challenges to the law from regional Italian judges and officially referred the case to the European Court of Justice to determine if Italy broke European legal rules.

“It’s a 180-degree change of direction,” Marco Mellone, one of four attorneys who fought the law in the latest June hearing, told CNN. “It’s a confession that they made a mistake in March.”

“I didn’t expect it because we’d requested a referral in the previous hearing but the court denied it,” said Corrado Caruso, a law professor at Bologna University, who also argued in court. “So it’s a positive step because it means the court has some doubts. I think there was a change of mind.”

Attorney Monica Restanio, who also argued the case, called it “the best news that we could have got, and much better than what I was expecting… they are putting everything back in play.”

‘This is a good sign’

Even though the Italian court claims it still believes the law complies with EU rules, Mellone views the move as a quiet admission of a past mistake. Past European rulings have firmly established that citizenship cannot be stripped away without warning, disproportionately, or all at once.

“They had the chance to refer it three months ago and didn’t, it’s clear they changed their opinion,” he said. “They’ve been brave. The law was completely against 30 years of case law at the ECJ.”

Restanio said that European legal precedent usually favors descendants, “establishing the need for adequate notice and individual assessment” before restricting citizenship by descent. Instead, Italy pushed L74/2025 through without warning, cutting off thousands of people who were already mid-application.

Since then, hundreds of Italian descendants have lost their legal battles challenging the new law, which bans dual citizens abroad from passing down their nationality and enforces the two-generation cap.

The challenge hinges on whether claimants were born Italians with unrecognized citizenship, as previous case law had ruled.

If the ECJ rules against the law, it will be completely wiped out, leaving the Italian government to write new legislation that complies with EU rules.

Caruso couldn’t fully explain the court’s sudden shift. “Maybe the court was too quick dismissing our request in March — maybe they reflected a little deeper,” he said, adding that recent unrelated rulings have been notably “EU-friendly.”

This is not the only challenge working its way through the system. In April, Italy’s supreme court examined the so-called “minor issue,” a 2024 measure that restricts citizenship by descent. Restanio said she is awaiting that final ruling “with great serenity.”

Meanwhile, Mellone called the constitutional court’s referral a historic moment — the first time an Italian court has conceded that something may be wrong with the new law.

“This is a good sign,” he said. “We were almost dead. Now we restart our battle.”

The-CNN-Wire
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