Italian Citizenship: the Turin Court Questions Article 3-bis of the “Tajani Decree” (2025) Order No. 167 of the Turin Court (25 June 2025): why this ruling may reshape the debate on iure sanguinis Italian citizenship.

On 25 June 2025, the Turin Court issued Order No. 167 in proceedings brought by María Eugenia Escovar Alvarado and others against the Italian Ministry of the Interior. The decision has rapidly emerged as one of the most debated judicial pronouncements of recent years in the field of Italian citizenship iure sanguinis.

The reason is straightforward: the Court subjects to rigorous scrutiny the constitutional, European and international compatibility of Article 3-bis of Law No. 91/1992, introduced by Decree-Law No. 36/2025 (later converted into Law No. 74/2025), with particular emphasis on its retroactive effects.

This article offers an accessible yet legally rigorous overview of the Court’s reasoning, the normative framework and the relevant case law, and explains why this ruling is of particular importance for individuals seeking recognition of Italian citizenship by descent.

1. The case: a “classic” iure sanguinis claim in a radically new legislative framework

The proceedings originate from an application pursuant to Article 28-decies of the Italian Code of Civil Procedure, filed on 28 March 2025 and duly served. The applicants sought a declaration and formal recognition of their status as Italian citizens iure sanguinis, claiming uninterrupted descent from Pietro Maria Dorato, an Italian citizen born in Turin on 11 October 1837, who later emigrated to Venezuela without ever acquiring Venezuelan nationality.

Up to this point, the case presents a familiar factual and legal pattern in Italian citizenship litigation based on blood descent. The novelty arises from the legislative intervention enacted through Decree-Law No. 36/2025, which introduced Article 3-bis into Law No. 91/1992. In substance, the provision establishes that:

“A person shall be deemed never to have acquired Italian citizenship if he or she was born abroad, even prior to the entry into force of this Article, and holds another nationality.”

This rule is accompanied by a set of cumulative conditions (letters a–d) and, crucially, by a temporal cut-off: it affects those who did not submit an administrative or judicial application by 11:59 p.m. (Rome time) on 27 March 2025.

In their authorised pleading of 11 June 2025, the applicants raised a constitutional challenge, alleging violations—inter alia—of Articles 3, 22, 77 and 117(1) of the Italian Constitution, and invoking European and international standards prohibiting arbitrary deprivation of nationality.

2. The Court’s pivotal question: procedural rule or concealed revocation of citizenship?

The Order identifies a preliminary issue that proves decisive for the entire case: should the new legislative regime be regarded as a mere procedural mechanism, immediately applicable under the principle tempus regit actum, or does it, in substance, produce a loss or revocation of citizenship status?

The Court highlights two defining features of Article 3-bis:

1. Its special and derogatory nature, explicitly introduced by the wording “by way of derogation”;
2. Its retroactive effect, as it applies to applications filed after 27 March 2025 and thus affects individuals already born who, under the previous legal framework, would have been unquestionably entitled to recognition.

From this perspective, the Court stresses that the analysis cannot remain purely formal. It must assess whether the immediate application of Article 3-bis is compatible with:

• the principles of reasonableness and legitimate expectations in legal certainty, derived from Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution;
• the prohibition of arbitrary deprivation of nationality, enshrined in Article 22 of the Constitution, Article 15(2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (10 December 1948), and Article 3(2) of Protocol No. 4 to the European Convention on Human Rights.

3. The cornerstone of the Order: iure sanguinis citizenship as an original and imprescriptible status

To grasp the full force of the Turin Court’s reasoning, one must return to a foundational premise of the Italian nationality system: its historically entrenched reliance on the principle of ius sanguinis, substantially unchanged since the 1865 Civil Code, through Law No. 555 of 1912, and into the current Law No. 91 of 1992.

From this continuity emerges a firmly consolidated doctrinal and jurisprudential core:

• citizenship by birth is an original mode of acquisition;
• once acquired, citizenship status is permanent and imprescriptible;
• it is justiciable at any time upon proof of an uninterrupted line of descent;
• it does not constitute a “progressively formed legal relationship”, but rather a perfect subjective right arising at birth.

Against this background, the Court rejects the interpretation according to which citizenship status would remain “incomplete” until formal judicial recognition. Such a view, the Court notes, is incompatible with the purely declaratory (non-constitutive) nature traditionally attributed to judgments recognising Italian citizenship iure sanguinis.

The Order expressly relies on the so-called “living law” (diritto vivente), citing seminal rulings of the Italian Supreme Court (Corte di Cassazione):

• Joint Chambers, Judgment No. 4466/2009, which qualifies Italian citizenship as an essential attribute of the person, characterised by absoluteness, original acquisition, inalienability and imprescriptibility;
• Joint Chambers, Judgment No. 29459/2019, holding that the absence of a judicial declaration does not extinguish the underlying right;
• Joint Chambers, Judgment No. 25318/2022, affirming that citizenship status depends exclusively on direct descent, provided the chain of transmission has not been interrupted by a voluntary act—an interruption expressly excluded in the present case. Crucially, this judgment clarifies that it is irrelevant whether previous generations exercised their right to formal recognition: citizenship forms part of the individual’s legal patrimony from birth.

The Court’s intermediate conclusion is unequivocal: under the pre-existing legal regime, individuals born abroad to an Italian ancestor were Italian citizens ab origine. Consequently, a rule that retrospectively reclassifies them as having “never” acquired citizenship operates, in substance, as a revocation.

4. Grounds of illegitimacy: Constitution, EU law and human rights

a) Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution: reasonableness, equality and legitimate expectations

The Turin Court underscores the manifest arbitrariness of the differential treatment between individuals who filed judicial applications before 28 March 2025 and those who did so afterwards, where such differentiation is unrelated to any objectively relevant factor.

As the Order recalls, constitutional jurisprudence has derived from Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution a general principle of reasonableness of legislation, coupled with an equally fundamental principle of legitimate reliance on legal certainty. Legal certainty, the Court notes, constitutes an inherent pillar of the constitutional order and of the “social pact” underpinning the republican system. A legislature unrestrained by respect for acquired rights could undermine not only entrenched rights relating to pensions or citizenship, but any constitutionally protected right, including property or savings.

In this respect, the Court relies on:

• Constitutional Court Judgment No. 169/2022, concerning retroactive interference with vested rights;
• and, above all, Constitutional Court Judgment No. 69/2014, which affirms that retroactivity finds a clear limit in the principle of legitimate expectations in legal certainty, and that rules on forfeiture cannot operate retroactively where the relevant time-limit was not previously determined (see also Judgment No. 191/2005).

In a field marked by highly consolidated jurisprudence such as iure sanguinis citizenship, the weight of legitimate expectations is correspondingly stronger.

b) Article 117(1) of the Constitution and EU citizenship (Articles 9 TEU and 20 TFEU)

From a European law perspective, the Court identifies what it terms the most robust safeguard against retroactive application of the decree. Italian citizenship automatically confers citizenship of the European Union under Article 20 TFEU; consequently, any national measure affecting Member State nationality must comply with EU law.

The Court draws extensively on the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union, in particular:

• CJEU, 5 September 2023, Case C-689/21, X v Udlændinge- og Integrationsministeriet, which addressed ipso iure loss of nationality and held that where deprivation of national citizenship entails loss of EU citizenship, the situation falls within the scope of EU law. Member States must therefore respect, inter alia, the principle of proportionality, as previously established in Rottmann (C-135/08), Tjebbes (C-221/17) and Wiener Landesregierung (C-118/20).

The CJEU further imposed two decisive requirements:

1. nationality must not be lost automatically without the possibility of an individual assessment of consequences;
2. individuals must have access to a mechanism for retention or ex tunc recovery of nationality within reasonable time-limits, which may begin to run only after the person has been specifically informed of the impending loss (paras. 50–52 of C-689/21).

Against this backdrop, the Order suggests that Article 3-bis infringes the EU Treaties governing Union citizenship, by effectively depriving individuals—who were indisputably Italian citizens by birth—of their nationality without any adequate intertemporal mechanism allowing its preservation within reasonable time.

c) Article 117(1) of the Constitution and the UDHR: prohibition of arbitrary deprivation (Article 15(2))

The Court also invokes Article 15(2) of the 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.”

This protection is integrated into the Italian constitutional system through Article 117(1), as interpreted by the Constitutional Court in Judgments Nos. 348 and 349 of 2007. An indiscriminate and retroactive loss of citizenship based solely on the failure to “manifest” the right is therefore characterised as an arbitrary deprivation.

d) Article 117(1) of the Constitution and Protocol No. 4 ECHR: the right of entry (Article 3(2))

Finally, the Order refers to Article 3(2) of Protocol No. 4 to the ECHR, which states:

“No one shall be deprived of the right to enter the territory of the State of which he is a national.”

If domestic legislation retroactively deprives individuals of nationality, it inevitably interferes with this fundamental right attached to citizenship.

5. The Court’s conclusion: (at least partial) unconstitutionality due to retroactivity and lack of transitional safeguards

The Turin Court ultimately concludes that the regime introduced by Decree-Law No. 36/2025 is constitutionally unlawful insofar as it retroactively imposes limitations on citizenship status predating the law’s entry into force. It is constitutionally impermissible to treat certain individuals as if they had never acquired Italian citizenship, restricting recognition “by birth” through conditions introduced ex novo.

Significantly, the Order does not deny the legitimacy of the reform’s underlying aim, linked to the concept of a “genuine link”. Rather, the constitutional defect lies in how the reform operates—namely, its retroactive application and the absence of an adequate transitional regime.

Accordingly, the Court envisages a partial declaration of unconstitutionality of Article 3-bis that would preserve the reform’s “useful effect”, in line with EU jurisprudence on the effective-link principle (with reference also to CJEU, 29 April 2025, Case C-181/23), while eliminating the detrimental consequences of retroactivity. Alternatively—or additionally—the Court suggests a manipulative-additive intervention by the Constitutional Court, introducing a reasonable temporal window or other intertemporal mechanism consistent with the principles articulated by the CJEU in C-689/21 (5 September 2023).

Why this Order matters for iure sanguinis applicants

In practical terms, Order No. 167 crystallises a powerful proposition: where the legal system recognises a descendant as a citizen from birth, subsequent legislation cannot retroactively erase that status without colliding with constitutional principles (reasonableness, equality, legitimate expectations), EU law (proportionality and protection of EU citizenship), and international human rights norms (prohibition of arbitrary deprivation of nationality).

The significance of the ruling lies in its sophisticated, multi-layered reasoning, which interweaves domestic “living law” (Supreme Court Joint Chambers), constitutional doctrine on retroactivity and legal certainty, and EU standards governing the loss of nationality.

The Turin Court’s order has marked a decisive turning point in the debate on Italian citizenship by descent. It has elevated the discussion to a higher legal plane, demonstrating that the protection of the rights of descendants of Italian nationals rests not only on historical principles and domestic legal tradition, but also on the foundational pillars of European Union law.

The hearing scheduled before the Italian Constitutional Court on 11 March constitutes a procedural stage for the presentation and examination of arguments; at the same time, it represents a critical juncture for the future of iure sanguinis Italian citizenship. The Court’s final decision is expected between mid and late April of this year, and is likely to have a decisive impact on the legal framework governing citizenship by descent.

Pablo Munini