The Court of Justice of the European Union, the top judicial institution of the EU, based in Luxembourg, could wipe out the controversial citizenship law, forcing the Italian government to rewrite and pass new legislation.
U-turn, about-face, backpedal — all of the above.
The Italian Constitutional Court is now asking the European Union’s Court of Justice to rule on whether the country’s citizenship-by-descent restrictions violate EU law.
This decision by the constitutional court completely undermines its own ruling, which upheld Italy’s 2025 law imposing harsh restrictions on qualifying for Italian citizenship.
Imposed without warning in March 2025, the restrictions limit eligibility only to those with an Italian parent or grandparent — a move that sent shockwaves through the Italian diaspora, as millions were suddenly cut off from pursuing citizenship to Italy and thousands were severed mid-application.
“Our Italian American community is very pleased that the Italian Constitutional Court has taken the unprecedented action of referring this case to the European Court of Justice,” said Hon. Basil Russo, who leads the Conference of Presidents of Major Italian American Organizations (COPOMIAO). “We are hopeful that the ECJ will overturn Italy’s punitive ancestry restrictions that currently prevent millions of Italian Americans from applying for dual citizenship.”
EU case law, over the past three decades, has consistently held that citizenship can’t be stripped away abruptly, disproportionately, or without warning.
“It’s a 180-degree change of direction,” Marco Mellone, one of four attorneys fighting the law head-on, told CNN. “It’s a confession that they made a mistake … they had the chance to refer it three months ago and didn’t, it’s clear they changed their opinion.”
The challenge hinges on whether claimants were born Italians with unrecognized citizenship, as long-established Italian case law had ruled.
If the ECJ rules against the citizenship restrictions, they will be completely wiped out, leaving the Italian government to write new legislation that complies with EU rules.
The final ruling could take months, or more than a year, to come down.
The ‘Minor Issue’
This is not the only challenge working its way through the system.
In late 2024, Italy’s Ministry of the Interior introduced a controversial administrative interpretation often referred to as the “minor issue.” Under this view, if the parent of an Italian child born abroad naturalized while the child was a minor, with them becoming, for example, U.S. citizens, then that act would sever the line of descent.
The sudden implementation of the issue cut off those whose applications for Italian citizenship were already in progress. The court is now weighing the legality of the introduction of the minor issue through a handful of cases, two of which include Italian American families, according to Newsweek.
In the coming months, Italy’s highest court for civil matters, the Corte Suprema di Cassazione (Italy’s Supreme Court), will hear challenges over the minor issue. These applicants will argue that citizenship by descent is not something granted upon application, but something possessed at birth and merely recognized through a legal process.
From that perspective, they contend, the state cannot strip individuals of a status they previously held, and that those affected should only include people born after the new restrictions took effect last year. A ruling on the matter will likely arrive in the coming months.
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