Rome: Italy's highest court has ruled that a child born with both Italian citizenship and citizenship in another country does not automatically lose Italian citizenship when a parent later naturalises abroad. The decision is expected to strengthen citizenship claims by descendants of Italian emigrants worldwide.
The ruling resolves a long-running legal dispute known as the 'Minor Issue', which has affected thousands of ancestry-based citizenship cases involving families who left Italy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, experts say.
The ruling — dated Sunday but published Wednesday — was made by the Court of Cassation's highest-level panel for resolving conflicting legal interpretations.
At the centre of the dispute was whether children automatically lost Italian citizenship when an Italian parent later acquired a foreign nationality while the children were still minors.
A restrictive interpretation adopted in 2023 led many later-generation applications to be rejected because authorities considered the citizenship line to have been interrupted.
What the court decided
The court said that under Italy's historical citizenship laws, children who were already Italian citizens by birth under the principle of 'iure sanguinis', or citizenship by bloodline, did not automatically lose their Italian citizenship when a parent became a citizen of another country.
The court clarified that children born in countries that automatically grant citizenship at birth — including the United States — retained their Italian citizenship even if their parents later naturalised there. Because they remained Italian citizens, they could pass that citizenship on to subsequent generations.
Court reverses recent interpretation
Lawyer Marco Mellone, who represented applicants in the case, said the ruling reversed a restrictive interpretation that had blocked citizenship claims in recent years, many by US citizens.
“The Supreme Court of Cassation has completely changed its position and gone back, confirming that all these Italian-American families — and, more generally, families in all countries where this situation existed — regain the right to Italian citizenship by descent,” Mellone told The Associated Press.
Impact on descendants of Italian emigrants
The decision could have broad implications for descendants of Italian emigrants, particularly in North and South America, where large Italian diaspora communities have ancestral ties to Italy. Mellone estimated that several hundred thousand families may have been affected by the restrictive interpretation adopted in recent years.
Legal experts said the judgment is likely to strengthen the position of applicants whose claims were rejected solely because of the Minor Issue and provide authoritative guidance to judges handling pending cases. The decision could also influence how Italian administrative authorities and consulates assess future citizenship applications.
Whether the Interior Ministry and Italian consulates formally adjust their practices to reflect the court's interpretation remains unclear. However, decisions issued by the panel — known as the “Sezioni Unite”, or United Sections — carry particular weight because they are intended to resolve conflicting interpretations of the law.
Mellone noted that “there's no one above” the panel, which has only very rarely reversed decisions.
The decision comes as Italy faces growing demand for citizenship by descent and legal disputes over the scope of ancestry-based citizenship rights.
Separately, a law championed by Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani that restricts citizenship transmission through more distant generations has been referred to the European Union's Court of Justice, with proceedings expected next year.