Constitutional Court Reviews Law 74/2025, Tajani Decree Stripping Citizenship Rights

(ITALY) — Italy’s Constitutional Court upheld the core provisions of Law 74/2025 on March 12, 2026, keeping in force a citizenship law that sharply narrows who can claim Italian nationality by descent abroad.

The ruling leaves intact the measure originally introduced as the Tajani Decree and confirms the end of Italy’s long-standing practice of unlimited generational citizenship by descent, or jus sanguinis, for Italians born outside the country.

At issue is a change that affects descendants of Italians in countries with large diaspora communities, including the United States, Brazil and Argentina. For many families, the decision closes a path that had allowed claims through more distant ancestors.

The Constitutional Court said in a press communiqué that it rejected challenges brought by lower courts, including the Tribunal of Turin, as “partly unfounded and partly inadmissible.” Full written reasoning is expected in the coming weeks, but the immediate result is that the law remains in force.

Law 74/2025 limits citizenship by descent to the children or grandchildren of an Italian-born citizen. Recognition beyond the second generation, including claims through great-grandparents, is no longer available for new applicants.

The law also imposes an exclusive citizenship requirement. A qualifying parent or grandparent must have held exclusively Italian citizenship at the time of the descendant’s birth, or at the time of death if the ancestor died before the birth.

That condition matters for many families whose Italian forebears naturalized elsewhere. If an ancestor had become a citizen of another country before the descendant was born, the line of transmission is treated as broken.

A retroactive cutoff built into the law protects applications already filed by a set deadline. Those submitted administratively or through the courts by 11:59 p.m. Rome time on March 27, 2025 remain covered.

The Constitutional Court ruling gives fresh legal weight to a policy shift that had already begun reshaping the work of consulates, lawyers and families collecting records abroad. It also strengthens the government’s effort to limit access to citizenship to closer generational ties.

Another change is already scheduled. Under Bill 1683, approved January 14, 2026, adult citizenship applications will be centralized in a new Citizenship Directorate in Rome starting January 1, 2029.

That move will reduce the processing role of local consulates for adult applications. In practice, it shifts much of the administrative burden away from Italy’s overseas posts and into a central office in the capital.

Taken together, Law 74/2025 and Bill 1683 redraw both eligibility and procedure. One restricts who can apply, while the other changes where many of those applications will be handled.

The legal change has immediate implications for descendants who had planned to apply through more distant family lines. Millions of Italian-Americans who hoped to claim citizenship through great-grandparents may now be ineligible unless they fall within narrow exceptions, including cases involving a parent who resided in Italy for at least two years.

For families with minor children born abroad, lawmakers later created a longer window in a separate measure. Law 26/2026, passed February 28, 2026, allows parents of eligible minor children born abroad until May 31, 2029 to file a “benefit-of-law” declaration to secure their children’s citizenship.

That extension offers relief to one group while leaving the broader restrictions untouched. Adults tracing descent through more remote ancestors still face the new limits confirmed by the Constitutional Court.

The ruling is also being felt as a cultural loss among some Italian diaspora groups that had viewed citizenship as a formal link to ancestry, language and family identity. Organizations such as the Italian Sons and Daughters of America, or ISDA, have described the decision as a “sobering” blow to efforts by descendants to reconnect with their heritage.

Those concerns sit alongside the government’s effort to draw a firmer line around citizenship transmission. By tying eligibility to two generations and to an ancestor’s exclusive Italian nationality, the law narrows recognition to descendants with a more direct legal bond.

The court’s decision settles, at least for now, the most immediate constitutional challenge to that approach. Because the judges upheld the core provisions, applicants and officials must now work within the new framework rather than waiting for the law to be set aside.

For people who filed before the March 27, 2025 deadline, the protection written into the law remains central. Their cases were shielded from the retroactive cutoff, preserving eligibility under the old rules if they had already entered the administrative or judicial process by 11:59 p.m. Rome time on March 27, 2025.

For those who had not filed by then, the path is narrower. Children and grandchildren of an Italian-born citizen can still qualify, but only if the ancestor met the law’s conditions at the relevant moment.

That means many cases once seen as routine under older jus sanguinis practice will no longer succeed. A claim based on a great-grandparent alone is no longer enough for a new application.

The effect reaches well beyond legal doctrine. In communities across the Americas, descendants had spent years gathering birth records, marriage certificates and naturalization documents to prepare claims through family lines stretching back generations.

Now the decisive questions are shorter and stricter: how many generations separate the applicant from the Italian-born ancestor, and did that ancestor hold exclusively Italian citizenship at the required time.

As of March 18, 2026, U.S. immigration agencies had issued no official statements or press releases on Law 74/2025. Neither U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services nor the Department of Homeland Security has announced a position on the Italian law.

That silence reflects the foreign nature of the issue. The measure changes Italian nationality law, not U.S. immigration status, and American agencies generally do not comment unless foreign legal changes affect U.S. naturalization or permanent residency requirements.

The U.S. Department of State does provide general guidance for dual nationals. Its guidance says, “U.S. law does not mention dual nationality or require a person to choose one nationality or another.”

That position provides wider context for Americans affected by the Italian change. The narrowing of Italian eligibility does not itself mean a U.S. citizen must give up American nationality to hold another one.

U.S. government notices tied to Italy in March 2026 have addressed other matters instead. The U.S. Embassy in Rome and the Bureau of Consular Affairs issued generic travel and security alerts, including notices related to demonstrations and new surrogacy laws, but they did not issue specific advisories on the citizenship descent law.

For applicants, the practical center of gravity now lies in Italian institutions. Families seeking updates on the Constitutional Court ruling or on consular procedures must look to Italian authorities that administer or explain the law.

The Constitutional Court posted its March 12, 2026 statement on its website at Italian Constitutional Court. Italy’s foreign ministry maintains consular guidance at Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, while the embassy in the United States has published updates at Italian Embassy in Washington, D.C..

The U.S. Department of State’s general country page for Italy remains available at Italy Country Information. That page provides background for travelers and dual nationals, though not a specific interpretation of Law 74/2025.

The broader political and social debate around the Tajani Decree is unlikely to end with the Constitutional Court ruling. Written reasons from the court may clarify how the judges assessed retroactivity, descent limits and the legislature’s power to redefine citizenship transmission.

Yet the legal effect is already plain. The Constitutional Court has left Law 74/2025 standing, and the route to Italian citizenship by descent now runs through a narrower gate.

For descendants abroad, especially those whose claims rested on great-grandparents or older lines, that change redraws expectations built over decades of expansive jus sanguinis recognition. For children and grandchildren who still qualify, the law preserves a path, but one tied more tightly to recent ancestry and to the legal status of the ancestor at the moment that matters.

And for the millions who saw citizenship as a way to formalize family ties across oceans and generations, the court’s ruling confirms that Italy has chosen a more restrictive definition of who can inherit that bond.