A Second Request for Referral of the Tajani Law to the Constitutional Court - Court of Mantua – October 24, 2025
"The Court noted clear doubts about the constitutional legitimacy of the provision in question, which introduces a hypothesis of deprivation of citizenship status already acquired by a person born abroad to an Italian mother. “This constitutes an automatic ex tunc loss of citizenship — or rather, a form of implicit revocation — for all those who, born before the entry into force of the decree in question, had already acquired, by virtue of their birth to an Italian citizen, the substantive ownership of the status civitatis.”
The second request for constitutional review of the new citizenship law — the so-called “Tajani Law” — arises from a resolution issued by the Court of Mantua on October 24, 2025.
The strategy pursued by the claimants to reach this decision did not follow the traditional judicial route for citizenship recognition. Instead, they relied on a specific judicial action provided by the Italian legal system for the rectification, creation, and opposition to corrections of civil registry records.
The case was handled in an innovative manner, diverging from the procedure commonly adopted in citizenship recognition cases.
Rather than waiting for the scheduling of a hearing — which, as is well known, can take months — the parties directly provoked the judge’s intervention through a specific ad hoc case created to raise the constitutional question.
The claimants filed an appeal under Article 95 of Presidential Decree No. 396/2000, challenging the refusal of the Civil Registry Officer of the Municipality of Canneto sull’Oglio to record the birth certificate of the minor child of a “new” Italian citizen iure sanguinis, born and residing abroad, whose citizenship had been recognized by a judgment of the Court of Brescia in April 2025.
Upon receiving the act of refusal, the matter was submitted to the Court of Mantua, accompanied by incidental questions of constitutionality concerning Law No. 74/2025 (which converted Decree-Law No. 36/2025).
The collegiate panel of the Court of Mantua accepted the unconstitutionality claims in a comprehensive and well-reasoned judgment, the most significant points of which are summarized below.
The Legal Principle at the Heart of the Case
A new law should not have the power to retroactively affect a subjective right that has already been perfected — such as citizenship iure sanguinis, which arises at birth.
Legal Analysis and Fundamental Principles of Citizenship Law
The Court explicitly cited Judgment No. 25318 of 2022 from the United Sections of the Court of Cassation, which reaffirmed the core principles established by Law No. 91/1992 governing the recognition of Italian citizenship rights. The ruling stated:
“The Italian legal system has traditionally maintained a conservative approach, with no substantial alterations to the predominant criterion of acquiring citizenship iure sanguinis, virtually unchanged since the Civil Code of 1865, through a structure later inherited first by Law No. 555 of 1912 and then by the current Law No. 91 of 1992. The fundamental acquisition is original — by birth.”
It further emphasized:
“Once acquired, the status of citizen is permanent and imprescriptible. It may be invoked at any time upon simple proof of the constitutive fact of acquisition — namely, birth to an Italian citizen.”
Interpretation of the Court of Mantua
Building upon this well-established legal doctrine, the Court of Mantua — applying the principle of diritto vivente (living law) — held that, at least under the regime prior to Decree-Law No. 36/2025, individuals born abroad who could demonstrate an unbroken line of descent from an Italian citizen were, by that fact alone, Italian citizens.
Citizenship, as an essential quality of the person, is absolute, original, inalienable, and imprescriptible (Court of Cassation, United Sections, No. 4466/2009).
Whether these individuals had or had not initiated judicial proceedings to obtain formal recognition of their status was a mere factual circumstance, irrelevant to the existence of the right. This is not a “progressively formed” legal relationship but a perfect subjective right arising at birth. The lack of formal judicial recognition does not extinguish the right itself.
Grounds of Unconstitutionality Identified by the Court
In light of this reasoning, the Court noted clear doubts about the constitutional legitimacy of the provision in question, which introduces a hypothesis of deprivation of citizenship status already acquired by a person born abroad to an Italian mother.
It concluded emphatically:
“This constitutes an automatic ex tunc loss of citizenship — or rather, a form of implicit revocation — for all those who, born before the entry into force of the decree in question, had already acquired, by virtue of their birth to an Italian citizen, the substantive ownership of the status civitatis.”
Constitutional Provisions Potentially Violated
The Court of Mantua identified several articles of the Italian Constitution potentially compromised by the Tajani Law:
- Article 22 – “No one may be deprived, for political reasons, of legal capacity, citizenship, or name.”
- The rule deprives Italian citizens iure sanguinis born before the decree’s entry into force of their citizenship, invoking supposed public interests such as the management of citizenship recognition flows, which cannot justify such deprivation.
- Article 3 – Principle of equality and legitimate expectation.
- While retroactive laws may be admissible in civil matters, they are limited by the principle of legitimate expectation in legal certainty. Retroactivity applied to the status civitatis undermines the legitimate expectation of those who, born before the new law, were already Italian citizens by birth.
- Article 2 – Inviolable rights of the individual.
Retroactive deprivation of citizenship arbitrarily infringes upon an inviolable human right.
- Article 24 – Right to defense.
The new law unreasonably restricts the right to defense by failing to provide a reasonable period following its entry into force for affected individuals to seek recognition of their citizenship through administrative or judicial means.
- Articles 1, 56, and 58 – Popular sovereignty and the right to vote.
- Italian citizenship is the essential prerequisite for exercising political rights. Any retroactive modification of citizenship acquisition criteria alters the composition of the electorate and, consequently, the foundation of democratic sovereignty.
- Articles 72 and 77 – Requirement of formal law.
The matter of citizenship must be governed exclusively by formal legislation enacted by Parliament. Any modification to iure sanguinis principles requires the ordinary legislative procedure set forth in Article 72.
- Article 117 – Respect for European and international obligations.
The provision also conflicts with the principle of non-discrimination established by Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Article 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
European Dimension and Practical Implications
The Mantua ruling reaffirms established principles and follows the line of the Turin Court’s ordinance issued in June — the first to challenge the constitutionality of the Tajani Law from a European-law perspective.
- Citizenship of a Member State of the European Union automatically confers citizenship of the Union (Article 20 TFEU).
- Any national act affecting the citizenship of a Member State must be compatible with EU law.
From these judicial pronouncements, it emerges that Italy faces a general retroactive revocation of citizenship based on an arbitrary temporal criterion (the date of March 28), in flagrant violation of European law.
The legal debate before the Court of Justice of the European Union will take time, but it will undoubtedly unfold.
Meanwhile, it is expected that the Italian Constitutional Court will restore the balance of substantive justice.
It is likely that the two pending constitutional cases — Turin and Mantua — will be joined in a single hearing, as the Turin case has not yet been assigned a rapporteur or a date.
This may delay the anticipated declaration of unconstitutionality of the Tajani Law, but it should not be viewed negatively: the new ordinance of the Court of Mantua strengthens the challenge and lends greater legal weight to the case — a potential double checkmate.
Other Italian courts may also issue new “ordinanze”, referring the question to the Constitutional Court for a definitive ruling.
Final Reflection
One thing remains certain — as we have maintained from the beginning:
Law and its incontrovertible principles always prevail, especially in the face of arbitrary political decisions that pursue neither justice nor a far-sighted and responsible vision of state policy.
The immigrants who, at the dawn of the last century, landed on the shores of the Río de la Plata arrived without financial means — yet they carried a treasure in their blood: Italian citizenship, which would later become the foundation of European citizenship.
Pablo Munini