Italy will limit its citizenship law based on blood ties to two generations, the government said on Friday, a move that affects tens of thousands of descendants of emigrants in Argentina and Latin America.
Previously, people proving blood ties of up to four generations – meaning their great-great grandfather was born in Italy – could apply to Italy for citizenship. A parent or grandparent who was born in the European nation is now required to apply for citizenship, according to the "Ius sanguinis" reform adopted by the council of ministers.
"The granting of citizenship is a serious thing and in past years there have been abuses," Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani told journalists following a council of ministers meeting.
The decree announced on Friday allows citizenship for people born outside of Italy only if either parent or either grandfather was Italian.
The goal, Tajani said, was to "boost the affective link between Italy and the citizen abroad".
The conditions will be even tougher, as "citizens born and residing abroad" and naturalised Italian citizens "will be required to maintain real ties with our country, exercising the rights and duties of citizens at least once every 25 years," the text says.
These rights and duties were not specified.
"The principle of the right of blood will not be abolished. Many descendants of emigrants will still be able to obtain Italian citizenship, but precise limits will be set, above all to avoid abuse," Tajani said, citing the "commercialisation of Italian passports".
Italy has long been a country of emigration, rather than immigration, and has taken an approach to citizenship that helps maintain ties with its wide diaspora.
Nationality is based on blood ties, rather than one's birthplace.
Italy’s Foreign Ministry cited a boom in the recognition of citizenship abroad in the past 10 years, increasing by 40 percent from 4.6 million people to 6.4 million people.
There are currently 60,000 pending proceedings to verify citizenship.
The minister cited as an example Argentina, which has the largest Italian immigrant community outside the country, where 20,000 descendants obtained nationality in 2023 alone by virtue of blood law and 30,000 in 2024.
Famously, one of them was Argentina’s President Javier Milei, who obtained citizenship in December during a trip to Rome through an accelerated procedure, signed off by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
Although the economist qualified because of his Calabrian ancestry, the move sparked outrage among the opposition, which is calling on Meloni to relax citizenship laws for migrants.
Despite its generous long-standing citizenship policy towards people of Italian blood, Italy strictly controls the awarding of citizenship to children born in the country to foreign parents.
Those children must wait until their 18th birthday before applying for citizenship, in an arduous bureaucratic process that can take years.
That has left hundreds of thousands of minors who were born and raised in Italy in legal limbo, unable to call themselves Italian.
Meloni opposes granting citizenship to those without blood ties despite Italy's shrinking population, arguing instead for policies to boost the birthrate.
Italy’s government also highlighted the case of Brazil, where 14,000 people obtained Italian passports in 2022 and 20,000 in 2024.
According to a Foreign Ministry estimate, with the law that was in force until now, between 60 and 80 million people in the world could claim Italian nationality.
– TIMES/AFP
Comments