Venice Extends Transitional Protection to Minors Born After the 2025 Reform
A recent decision of the Court of Venice addresses a particularly significant question arising from Italy’s 2025 reform of citizenship by descent: whether a minor born after the entry into force of the new legislation may intervene in judicial proceedings for recognition of Italian citizenship that had already been validly instituted by an ascendant under the former legal framework. By decision of 14 September 2026 in proceedings R.G. No. 19589/2023, Judge Giuseppina Zito held the minors’ intervention admissible and upheld the claims of both the original applicants and five minors who subsequently joined the proceedings.
A ruling at the intersection of the former and current legal regimes
A recent decision of the Court of Venice addresses a particularly significant question arising from Italy’s 2025 reform of citizenship by descent: whether a minor born after the entry into force of the new legislation may intervene in judicial proceedings for recognition of Italian citizenship that had already been validly instituted by an ascendant under the former legal framework.
By decision of 14 September 2026 in proceedings R.G. No. 19589/2023, Judge Giuseppina Zito held the minors’ intervention admissible and upheld the claims of both the original applicants and five minors who subsequently joined the proceedings.
The reasoning is not predicated upon a straightforward extension of the former legislation to the minors. Rather, the Court adopts a coordinated and constitutionally oriented construction of the transitional provisions introduced in 2025, the new statutory rules governing minors, and the principles subsequently articulated by the Italian Constitutional Court in Judgment No. 63/2026.
The temporal premise: proceedings instituted before the reform
The principal proceedings had been commenced in 2023, well before the statutory cut-off of 11:59 p.m. on 27 March 2025.
Decree-Law No. 36/2025, converted with amendments by Law No. 74/2025, introduced Article 3-bis into Law No. 91/1992 and substantially recast the legal framework governing acquisition of Italian citizenship by descent for persons born abroad. The amended legislation nevertheless preserves specified situations in which administrative or judicial applications had already been lodged within the statutory time limit.
For the Venice Court, the prior and valid institution of the proceedings is therefore not merely a factual antecedent. It is the juridical premise upon which the application of the transitional regime is constructed.
The transitional regime extends beyond the originating application
The minors’ interventions pursuant to Article 105 of the Italian Code of Civil Procedure were filed after the new legislation had entered into force. The central issue was therefore whether the transitional protection attaching to proceedings commenced before the reform was confined to the original applicants, or whether it could continue to operate as those proceedings developed.
The Court considered it necessary to adopt a “constitutionally oriented interpretation of the new legislative text”, construing Article 1(1-ter) of the conversion law in conjunction with Articles 3-bis and 4(1-bis) of Law No. 91/1992.
The resulting proposition is central to the judgment: the transitional regime is not exhausted by its application to the originating claim, but extends to the subsequent course of proceedings instituted while the previous legislation remained in force.
On that construction, the legally material date is not solely the date upon which the minor intervenes. Equal significance attaches to the date on which the principal proceedings were validly commenced by the ascendant. Transitional protection may therefore continue to produce procedural and substantive effects throughout the development of the pending action.
The decisive point: a minor born after the reform
The most consequential aspect of the decision concerns a child who had not yet been born when the new statutory regime entered into force.
The Court expressly held that a minor may intervene in proceedings validly instituted by an ascendant before the reform and participate in the judicial determination of citizenship even where the child was born after the new legislation took effect.
This conclusion must be read within the precise confines of the judgment. The Court did not hold that every child born abroad after the reform automatically falls within the former iure sanguinis regime. Its reasoning is instead anchored to the existence of proceedings validly instituted before the statutory cut-off and to the minor’s subsequent intervention in those already pending proceedings.
The significance of the ruling therefore lies in its treatment of the transitional regime as capable, in the circumstances identified by the Court, of governing the subsequent evolution of an existing judicial relationship rather than merely preserving a static class of parties as at the cut-off date.
The declaration of intent and the procedural act of intervention
The judgment also addresses the declaration contemplated by the amended legislation in relation to minors.
Article 4(1-bis) of Law No. 91/1992 gives legal relevance, in the circumstances prescribed by the statute, to a declaration by the parents or guardian expressing the intention that the minor acquire Italian citizenship. The Venice Court held that this requirement may be satisfied within the pending proceedings themselves: the requisite declaration may be embodied in the act of intervention, insofar as that act constitutes an unequivocal manifestation of the intention to obtain citizenship for the minor.
The Court further acknowledged that, under the amended statutory framework, the minor’s acquisition of citizenship may operate ex nunc and may therefore be constitutive rather than declaratory in effect. That feature does not, in the Court’s analysis, render the intervention inadmissible. The judicial inquiry remains confined to ascertaining legally predetermined conditions — descent and, where required, the relevant declaration — rather than exercising the discretionary assessment characteristic of other modes of conferral of citizenship.
The relevance of Constitutional Court Judgment No. 63/2026
The Venice decision expressly invokes Judgment No. 63/2026 of the Italian Constitutional Court. The relationship between the two decisions, however, requires careful qualification.
Judgment No. 63/2026 did not determine the specific question whether minors may intervene in citizenship proceedings already pending before the ordinary courts. The Constitutional Court examined Article 3-bis of Law No. 91/1992 and characterised the new provision as establishing an original preclusion to acquisition, operating ex tunc, rather than as a revocation of citizenship. It also addressed the legal significance of the statutory cut-off and the protection accorded to certain applications lodged within the prescribed period.
The Court of Venice draws upon those principles as interpretative guidance. In particular, it reasons that where the legislature itself attributes decisive significance to the date on which judicial proceedings were instituted for the purpose of determining the applicable legal regime, that temporal criterion may also bear upon the subsequent procedural development of the action.
The proposition concerning minors’ intervention is therefore an interpretative development made by the Court of Venice. It should not be attributed directly to the Constitutional Court.
The broader first-instance jurisprudence
The judgment also places its reasoning within an emerging body of first-instance case law, referring to decisions of the Courts of Turin (Nos. 196/2026, 935/2026 and 2013/2026), Venice (No. 5964/2026), Trento (No. 287/2026) and Naples (No. 6952/2026).
Those authorities are cited in support of the admissibility of intervention by minors by reference to the substantial identity of the legal position asserted, the common juridical basis of the claims, their qualified connection, considerations of procedural economy, and the desirability of avoiding inconsistent judgments.
A distinction nevertheless remains essential: the Venice decision does not state that each of those earlier judgments had already determined the particular position of a child born after the 2025 reform. It is the reasoning adopted in the decision of 14 September 2026 that expressly extends the analysis to that factual scenario.
The extension to 31 May 2029 does not determine the outcome
The Court also considered the extension to 31 May 2029 of the period within which the declaration relating to minors may be made.
In the Court’s view, that extension affects the temporal dimension of the statutory mechanism only. It enlarges the period within which the relevant faculty may be exercised but does not alter the legal structure of the entitlement or the nature of the judicial determination required.
Accordingly, the Venice Court’s conclusion does not rest upon the extension of the deadline as such. Its legal foundation lies in the coordinated construction of the transitional provisions and in the continuity of proceedings validly commenced before the reform.
The practical outcome and the limits of the ruling
The practical result is noteworthy: the Court upheld not only the claims of the original applicants but also those of five minors who subsequently intervened.
The concluding reasoning states, in substance, that where proceedings for recognition of Italian citizenship were instituted by ascendants before the reform, the judicial determination of the relevant statutory requirements may extend to minors who subsequently intervene in those pending proceedings.
The ruling should nevertheless not be understood as invalidating the 2025 reform or as establishing a general entitlement for every child born after its entry into force to be added to proceedings commenced by a parent or ascendant. The ratio of the decision is materially narrower: there must be proceedings validly instituted within the temporal framework recognised by the legislation; the minor must subsequently intervene in those proceedings; and the statutory requirements identified through the Court’s coordinated construction of the amended regime must be satisfied, including the requisite manifestation of intent where applicable.
A significant development in the post-reform case law
The decision of 14 September 2026 constitutes a significant development in the first-instance jurisprudence generated by the 2025 citizenship reform.
Its importance lies less in the favourable disposition of the individual case than in the legal architecture of the reasoning. The Court brings into relation three distinct elements: a judicial application instituted by an ascendant before the reform, the subsequently introduced statutory conditions governing minors, and constitutional principles employed as interpretative criteria.
The resulting construction treats the transitional regime not as a closed snapshot of the parties existing at the statutory cut-off, but as a body of rules capable, within the limits identified by the Court, of accompanying the evolution of proceedings already validly pending.
On that basis, the Court of Venice concludes that a minor may intervene in such proceedings even where the child was born after the new legislation entered into force. The proposition is important, but its future scope will depend upon the development of subsequent case law and upon the treatment of comparable factual and procedural circumstances by other courts.
Pablo Munini