The Italian Citizenship Ruling in Numbers: Four Court Decisions, Three ISTAT Series and One Missing Figure

What Decree-Law 36/2025 changed

The rule sits in a new article 3-bis of Law 91/1992, the citizenship law. Decree-Law 36/2025 inserted it, and Law 74/2025 converted it, published in the Gazzetta Ufficiale n. 118 on May 23, 2025. Under the coordinated text on Normattiva, a person born abroad who holds another citizenship is treated as never having acquired Italian citizenship. Several exceptions follow.

Letters (a), (a-bis) and (b) protect filings made in time. A consular or municipal application filed by 23:59 Rome time on March 27, 2025 keeps the old rules. So does an appointment communicated by that time, and a court claim filed by that time. Letter (c) covers new claims through a parent or grandparent who "possiede, o possedeva al momento della morte, esclusivamente la cittadinanza italiana" (holds, or held at death, only Italian citizenship). Letter (d) covers a parent or adopter who lived in Italy for at least two continuous years after acquiring citizenship and before the child's birth or adoption. Letter (e) was repealed.

The test changed during conversion. The original decree used a parent or grandparent born in Italy, according to the foreign ministry's release of March 28, 2025. The only-Italian-citizenship wording came with Law 74/2025, whose changes took effect on May 24, 2025. The date the decree itself took effect is less clear. ISTAT and the Constitutional Court's pages give March 28, 2025, the day of publication. Normattiva's metadata gives March 29. The 23:59 cut-off on March 27 is undisputed. A separate transitional deadline lets parents declare citizenship for minor children. The current consolidated text on Normattiva shows May 31, 2029, where the 2025 conversion text said May 31, 2026. The consulate in Boston gives 2029. The law firm EIG Law attributes the extension to Law 26 of February 28, 2026, the annual deadlines law.

Costs rose before the decree. Law 207/2024, the 2025 budget law, doubled the consular fee from €300 to €600 per adult applicant from January 1, 2025, according to consulate notices. Comuni may charge up to €600 per adult applicant, and unpaid applications cannot proceed, as reported by the public-administration site lentepubblica. In court, a Ministry of Justice circular sets a €600 contribution "dovuto per ciascuna parte ricorrente" (due for each claimant), even on a joint claim. Four adult siblings filing together therefore pay €2,400 in court contributions before lawyers, translations and apostilles (our calculation).

A second law tightens the administrative route. Law 11 of January 19, 2026, in force from February 19, moves recognition for adults resident abroad to a central foreign ministry office. Filing will be by post, with a 36-month decision deadline. The office takes over on January 1, 2029. Until then, each consulate's yearly intake of adult applicants is capped at the number of procedures it concluded in 2025, with a minimum of 100. For 2029 and 2030 the national cap equals the number of fee-paid applications in 2025. The interim caps therefore index to a year the decree had already depressed. Even applicants who meet an exception now face a quota.

Four decisions, four different questions

The first decision predates the decree's review. In sentenza 142/2025, decided on June 24 and deposited on July 31, 2025, the Constitutional Court ruled on referrals from Bologna, Rome, Milan and Florence. Those judges challenged unlimited transmission of citizenship under the law as it stood before 2025. The Court found the questions inadmissible or unfounded and said the change the judges sought required discretionary choices for the legislator. It added that "resta applicabile ai giudizi a quibus la pregressa disciplina" (the old rules still govern the cases referred), because those claims were filed before March 27, 2025. The ruling did not review Decree-Law 36/2025.

The second decision addressed the decree directly. The Tribunale di Torino referred art. 3-bis to the Court in June 2025. The Court heard and decided the case on March 11, 2026 and deposited its reasons on April 30, 2026 as sentenza 63/2026. It found the challenges under article 3 of the Constitution and under EU citizenship law unfounded. It declared the challenges under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention's Protocol 4 inadmissible. The Court classed the rule as a "preclusione originaria" (an original bar to acquiring citizenship). It does not revoke anyone's status, and positions already consolidated are untouched. The claimants had argued that the rule was a paradigm case of genuine retroactivity. The Court's press release says the legislator struck a "bilanciamento non irragionevole" (a balance that is not unreasonable).

The third decision sent one question to Luxembourg. Order 147/2026 joined referrals from Mantova and Campobasso. The Court decided it on June 9, 2026 and deposited it on July 23, 2026. It asks the EU Court of Justice whether articles 9 TEU and 20 TFEU "ostino" (preclude) art. 3-bis "nella parte in cui configura una preclusione originaria" (insofar as it creates an original bar). The proceedings are suspended "sino alla definizione" (until the question is answered). The Court's press release says it is "ribadendo la posizione già assunta con la sentenza numero 63 del 2026" (restating its position in sentenza 63/2026). The order does not annul the rule, suspend the decree or set a deadline.

The EU case is registered as C-816/26, under the fictitious name Picuso. We could not open the EU court's online docket. We read a copy of the court's own summary of the request, hosted by the Brazilian site italianismo.com.br. It names the Constitutional Court as the referring court and Italy's Prime Minister as respondent, in Italian. It contains no request for an accelerated or urgent procedure. Lawyers have estimated a ruling in 12 to 18 months. Those are opinions, and the court has published no timetable.

The fourth decision came from a different court and helped people already in the queue. The Court of Cassation, sitting as the Sezioni Unite, deposited sentenza 24045/2026 on July 26, 2026 in a case brought by a Venezuelan family against the Interior Ministry. It held that art. 3-bis does not apply to court claims filed before March 27, 2025. It also settled the long-disputed minor issue in claimants' favor. A child born abroad in a birthright-citizenship country "è bipolide di diritto dalla nascita" (is a dual citizen by law from birth) and keeps Italian citizenship if the parent later naturalizes. An Interior Ministry circular, filed in August 2026, applies the ruling to parental naturalizations between July 1, 1912 and August 15, 1992. Applicants refused under the old reading may ask for a review without filing again.

The only descent number measures the smallest channel

ISTAT's report on non-EU citizens counts acquisitions of citizenship by foreign nationals resident in Italy. In 2025 they totaled 196,955, down 9.4% from more than 217,000 in 2024. Non-EU nationals made up just over 178,000 of them, or 90.4%. ISTAT publishes the descent split for that non-EU group only. It fell from almost 22,000 to under 13,000, a drop of 41.6%. ISTAT prints the figures rounded, and its percentage uses exact counts. On the rounded figures the fall is 40.9% (our calculation).

The group is narrow. These are people who live in Italy and hold a non-EU passport, and almost 91% of 2025's descent acquirers were Argentines or Brazilians, according to ISTAT. Descent made up about 7% of non-EU acquisitions in 2025 (our calculation). Other routes held up. Acquisitions through residence numbered 80,393, or 45.2%. Minors accounted for almost 53,000. Marriage rose 7.5% to 20,575, and election at age 18 rose 6.6% to more than 11,000.

The same report shows a surge on a different measure. Italy issued 426,956 new residence permits to non-EU nationals in 2025, up 47.2%. The stock of valid permits rose 5.8%, from 3,810,741 to 4,030,016. The permit figures say nothing about descent. They appear here because news coverage paired them with the descent fall. Visitor arrivals, a separate measure again, are tracked in our 2026 tourism record watch.

The descent figure leaves out most descent claimants. Applicants who live abroad apply at a consulate or file in an Italian court. Neither route requires residence in Italy. ISTAT data reported by Il Sole 24 Ore put 2024's descent recognitions at 140,735, of which 113,221 were recorded abroad. Of those, 52,558 went through consulates and 60,663 through the courts. We did not locate the ISTAT primary for those figures. Their 2025 equivalents have not been published.

A revised baseline turned a rise into a fall

ISTAT's second series covers Italians resident abroad. It counts citizenship acquisitions recorded for people living outside Italy, by every route. The 2025 edition, published on September 3, 2026, reports 127,477 acquisitions abroad in 2025, a provisional figure. It compares that with 137,622 for 2024 and reports a fall of 7.4%.

The previous edition told a different story. Published on July 23, 2025, it gave 2024 as 120,835, a provisional figure that ISTAT described as up 4.4% on 2023. The exact counts, against 116,338 for 2023, give 3.9% (our calculation). Against that superseded figure, 2025 would show a rise of 5.5% (our calculation). The revision added 16,787 acquisitions to 2024, or 13.9% (our calculation). That is more than the 10,145 fall ISTAT now reports. ISTAT says the revised data "sostituiscono integralmente quelli precedentemente diffusi" (fully replace those published earlier). The 7.4% fall is the correct reading. ISTAT does not mention the old figure in the new release, so the revision only shows up when the two editions are compared.

A third count exists. ISTAT data reported by Il Sole 24 Ore on June 25, 2025 gave 340,297 acquisitions in 2024, split into 126,299 abroad and 213,998 in Italy. That compilation is internally consistent, and its components sum to the abroad total. It is still a different series, compiled from a municipal survey, and its 126,299 cannot be compared with either of ISTAT's other figures for 2024.

The 2025 all-route total also hides the reason for acquisition. The 2023–2024 edition did publish a split for 2023. Descent accounted for 52% of acquisitions abroad that year, minors living with a parent for 37% and marriage for 11%. Brazil recorded more than 41,000 acquisitions and Argentina about 33,000. The 2025 edition gives no split by reason or by country. No edition gives a figure for acquisitions in the United States.

The clearest signal is in the birth records

ISTAT's release on Italians abroad points to a better measure of the decree's reach. Births abroad to Italian citizens fell from 26,004 in 2024 to 16,345 in 2025, a drop of 37.1%. ISTAT links the fall explicitly to Decree-Law 36/2025.

The fall is steepest where descent claims were most common. Registered births to Italian citizens fell 55.8% in Argentina and 66.6% in Brazil. In the United States they fell 36.1%, to 725. These are the only official 2025 figures that show the decree's effect by country. They measure the next generation. The applicants of 2025 remain uncounted.

The stock of Italian citizens abroad still grew. ISTAT's preliminary count for December 31, 2025 is 6,603,579, up from 6,420,678 a year earlier, or 2.8% (our calculation). Argentina rose from 1,006,221 to 1,030,643 (+2.4%), Brazil from 692,064 to 748,463 (+8.1%) and the United States from 333,432 to 347,542 (+4.2%), all our calculations. A stock combines births, registrations and recognitions. A rising stock does not show that new claims continue.

Two other counts for the end of 2025 circulate. An Interior Ministry decree, as reported by the news agency AGI, gives 6,630,284. Antonio Tajani, the foreign minister, told a conference of consuls in June 2026 that there were more than 7 million, as reported by Italianismo. ISTAT's count and the ministry decree differ by 26,705 (our calculation). Neither supports 7 million.

The backlog the decree was written to stop

The government justified the decree with a growing queue. The State Attorney, defending the law in sentenza 63/2026, said pending citizenship court proceedings had reportedly gone from 23,654 in 2022 to 61,628 in 2024 ("sarebbero passati", in the judgment's wording). That is a rise of 160.5%, or about 2.6 times (our calculation). No underlying source is given. The foreign ministry's release of March 28, 2025 also gave more than 60,000 pending cases, without a source.

The 61,628 figure is often confused with another. ISTAT data reported by Il Sole 24 Ore count 60,663 judicial recognitions completed in 2024. One is a stock of open cases. The other is a flow of decided ones. They measure different things and should not be read as the same figure.

The consular side grew faster. The Senate Budget Service's note 235, from April 2025, reports consular applications decided rising from 54,180 in 2022 to 69,056 in 2023, up 27.5% (our calculation). Pending applications rose from 63,598 to 135,197, up 112.6% (our calculation). The note carries a 10-year projection of 1,514,206 applications awaiting processing, which the note itself calls extremely optimistic. The latest official backlog figure is for the end of 2023. Bill A.C. 2369 recorded only 10,079 fee-paid applications between January 1 and March 26, 2025, so the scale of any last-minute rush is unknown.

Behind the queue sits an estimate of the diaspora. The foreign ministry's release of March 28, 2025 said descendants who "potrebbero chiedere il riconoscimento" (could apply for recognition) number "potenzialmente tra i 60 e gli 80 milioni" (potentially between 60 and 80 million). It gave no method. The Senate note and sentenza 63/2026 use "oltre 60 milioni" (more than 60 million), taken from the decree's technical report, which calls it a "stima conservativa" (conservative estimate). The State Attorney said about 60 million. A bill in the Chamber, A.C. 2369, describes the 60 million figure as a speculative projection from 2011. The defensible wording is more than 60 million descendants, a government estimate. No official document puts the number of eligible people at 80 million.

Local registry offices felt the strain before the decree. Il Post reported in January 2024 that Val di Zoldo, a comune of 2,745 residents, had 551 citizenship files backlogged. Law 11/2026 now moves adult applications abroad away from consulates to one central office from 2029, under the intake caps described above.

Claims tested against the court texts and ISTAT

News coverage of the rulings has repeated figures and legal readings that the primary texts do not support. We tested claims where we could name the outlet or person and the date. The most common error treats the decree as a loss of citizenship. The Constitutional Court classed it as a bar on acquisition, and people already recognized keep their status. Another error runs the other way and treats the EU referral as a likely end to the law. Order 147/2026 says nothing about consequences, and the Court restated its earlier holding in the same breath.

Numbers travel further than legal reasoning. CNN's "millions" and The Local's "hundreds of thousands" have no source in any court or ministry document we opened. The 80 million figure appears in law-firm and relocation pages without a method. The foreign ministry's own country counts for Argentina and Brazil fall well below ISTAT's figures for the same countries, and nobody has reconciled them. One claim checked out. The Local's report on October 23, 2026 of a fall of about 42% in descent grants, to under 13,000 from about 22,000, matches ISTAT. It did not state that the figure covers only non-EU nationals living in Italy.

The diaspora as a roots-tourism market

The foreign ministry closed the descent route and kept courting the diaspora as travelers. Its roots tourism page, undated and copyrighted 2026, says ENIT counted 5.8 million roots travelers in 1997. It gives 6.6 million in 2024, up 13.8%, and an estimated 7.4 million for 2026. It puts their spending at about €5 billion in 2024, up 34.4%. It reports 1.9 million visits to the Italea website since March 2025, more than 13,000 travelers using the Italeacard and more than 10,000 requests for trips or genealogy help.

The page gives no source or method for the 2024 to 2026 figures. They are the government's own and unaudited. No source we found links citizenship claims to trips. Consular and court routes do not require travel to Italy, and a descendant can be recognized without visiting. Any claim that the decree will cut or raise visitor numbers has no data behind it.

The overlap is in the itinerary. Descendants who travel to see an ancestral town or consult a parish register do so under ordinary entry rules. Those rules are changing for non-EU visitors with the EU's new border systems, as covered in our analysis of EES and ETIAS at Italy's borders.

What this means for travelers, businesses and analysts

Travelers with Italian ancestry should read the 2026 rulings as confirmation of the 2025 rules. A new claim filed after 23:59 Rome time on March 27, 2025 needs a parent or grandparent who held only Italian citizenship, or a parent who lived in Italy for two continuous years after becoming Italian and before your birth. A great-grandparent line alone generally no longer supports a new filing. Claims filed before the cut-off stay under the old rules, and the Court of Cassation has protected pre-deadline court claims. Fees are €600 per adult at a consulate and €600 per claimant in court, and consular intake is capped until 2029. The EU referral has no date and no guaranteed result. Our guide to Italian citizenship by descent explains the routes, and our guide to moving to Italy covers residence options for those the new rule excludes. Nothing here is legal advice. Check your consulate's current instructions and speak to a qualified Italian lawyer before you file. If you are planning a roots trip, check the Italy travel requirements for your passport, and if the family town is in the south, our Sicily travel guide is a place to start.

Tourism businesses and investors should treat the roots market as an audience with no hard numbers. The foreign ministry's 6.6 million roots travelers in 2024 and 7.4 million for 2026 carry no method. No source ties citizenship recognition to trips, so the decree gives no measurable reason to expect fewer or more heritage visitors. The citizenship services market is a separate question. Births abroad registered to Italian citizens fell 37.1% in 2025, and Law 11/2026 caps consular intake at 2025 levels and centralizes adult applications from 2029. Genealogy, document and legal services built on great-grandparent claims face a smaller pool of new applicants under art. 3-bis. Pre-deadline claims and the reviews opened by the Interior Ministry's circular still generate work.

Journalists and analysts should use the figures in the box above, each with its series and scope. Do not repeat that millions were stripped of citizenship, that 80 million are eligible, that the EU court will wipe the law out, that 2024 acquisitions abroad were 120,835, or that Italy has more than 7 million citizens abroad. Do not present the 41.6% as a national descent figure.