Italy’s New Citizenship Laws Tear Families Apart as Descendants Fight for Equal Rights

For a lot of people around the world, having an Italian grandparent or great-grandparent wasn’t just a nice bit of family lore. It was a real, legal doorway back into the country, a way to claim citizenship, and with it, the right to live and work anywhere in the EU. That doorway just got a lot narrower.

So what actually changed?

Italy has long operated on ius sanguinis citizenship passed down through bloodline, sometimes stretching back several generations. That’s no longer the case. A law passed in spring 2025 (it started as a decree in March, then became formal legislation by May) put real limits on who can claim citizenship this way if they were born outside Italy and already hold another passport. Now, in most cases, you need a parent or grandparent whose only citizenship was Italian either currently or at the time they died. There’s also a second path: if your Italian parent lived in Italy for at least two continuous years before you were born or adopted, that can qualify you too. Basically, if your Italian roots go back further than a grandparent, this reform probably affects you.

The part that’s causing real pain: siblings ending up on opposite sides

Here’s where it gets messy. Two cousins or even two siblings from the same family tree can now end up with completely different outcomes, just based on timing. If one relative got their application in before the March 2025 cutoff, they’re likely grandfathered into the old, more generous rules. A relative who was slower to apply, even by a little, could get caught under the new restrictions entirely. There’s also a specific carve-out for minors: children of Italian citizens by birth had until May 31, 2026, to file certain declarations under special provisions. For families scattered across different countries, this isn’t an abstract policy shift, it’s the difference between one relative being “Italian” on paper and another one not being.

Why did Italy do this?

The government’s position is pretty straightforward: they want citizenship to reflect an actual, living connection to the country, not just a paper trail. Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani has pushed back on the idea that this guts ius sanguinis, arguing instead that it closes loopholes that were letting the whole system get commercialized essentially, passports for people with only the thinnest ancestral tie to Italy. And the numbers back up why they’re worried about scale: the population of Italians registered abroad jumped from roughly 4.6 million in 2014 to 6.4 million just ten years later. That’s a huge increase, and it’s clearly part of what pushed lawmakers to act. Critics see it differently; they argue the law creates arbitrary winners and losers among people who, heritage-wise, are in the exact same boat.

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The courts weighed in and sided with the government

In March 2026, Italy’s Constitutional Court took up the challenges to this law and largely upheld it. The ruling confirmed the new restrictions can apply retroactively, even to people born before the 2025 reform existed though the court did carve out protections for people who’d already applied or had appointments scheduled, along with anyone who meets the new parent/grandparent standard. That ruling pretty much cements this as the new normal, at least for now. Individual cases can still hinge a lot on specific family documentation and history, but the broad legal question has been settled.

Why this matters beyond the paperwork

This isn’t just about passports. Italian citizenship comes with EU citizenship attached to the ability to live, work, and study anywhere in the European Union. For a lot of descendants, it’s also tangled up with identity and family history in ways that go well beyond legal status.Italy is now navigating a real tension: how do you protect the meaning of citizenship without cutting off the diaspora that’s been calling itself Italian for generations? For the families now sorting out who qualifies and who doesn’t, there’s no clean answer, just a legal line that now runs straight through some family trees.

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