NextFin News - Italy’s Constitutional Court has upheld the restrictive "Tajani Decree," a landmark ruling delivered on March 11, 2026, that effectively ends the era of unlimited citizenship by descent for millions of people in the Italian diaspora. By validating Law 74/2025, the court has confirmed that the Italian government possesses the sovereign right to impose generational limits and residency requirements on those seeking to claim citizenship through "jus sanguinis," or the right of blood. The decision is a decisive victory for the administration of U.S. President Trump’s European allies, specifically the coalition government in Rome, which has long argued that the previous system was being exploited by "passport seekers" with no tangible connection to modern Italy.
The legal challenge, which had been referred to the high court by judges in Campobasso and other regional jurisdictions, argued that the new restrictions violated Article 22 of the Italian Constitution, which prohibits the deprivation of citizenship for political reasons. However, the Constitutional Court ruled that the right to citizenship is not absolute and can be regulated to ensure a "genuine link" between the individual and the state. Under the now-upheld law, applicants born abroad must prove that at least one direct ancestor within three generations maintained active ties to Italy, or they must fulfill a new one-year residency requirement in an Italian municipality before their application can be finalized.
This ruling carries immediate and severe consequences for the estimated 60 million people of Italian descent worldwide, particularly in Brazil, Argentina, and the United States. For decades, Italy was one of the few nations allowing citizenship to be passed down indefinitely, provided the line of descent was never broken by naturalization in another country. That open-door policy created a massive administrative backlog, with some consulates in South America reporting wait times of over a decade. By upholding the 2025 restrictions, the court has effectively cleared the path for the government to purge thousands of pending applications that do not meet the new criteria, potentially reducing the pool of eligible claimants by more than 70%.
The economic implications are equally stark. The "citizenship industry"—a network of specialized law firms, genealogists, and "citizenship tourism" agencies—faces a sudden collapse in demand. In small Italian villages, where "jus sanguinis" applicants often paid for short-term rentals to establish residency, the ruling threatens a niche but vital source of local revenue. Conversely, the Italian government views the decision as a fiscal win, arguing that the cost of providing consular services and potential social benefits to millions of "paper Italians" who do not pay taxes in Italy was becoming unsustainable. The ruling also aligns with a broader European trend toward tightening nationality laws as right-wing governments seek to redefine national identity through the lens of active civic participation rather than distant ancestry.
Critics of the decision argue that the court has ignored the historical debt Italy owes to its emigrants, who supported the domestic economy through remittances for over a century. They contend that the "genuine link" requirement is applied inconsistently, noting that wealthy investors can still fast-track residency while the descendants of poor laborers are shut out. Despite these objections, the ruling is final and cannot be appealed within the Italian legal system. The focus now shifts to the European Court of Human Rights, where several advocacy groups have already pledged to file suits, though legal experts suggest that international courts rarely interfere with a sovereign nation’s right to define its own citizenry.
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