The Constitutional Court Has Ruled: What Happened, What It Left Open, and What It Means for You

Key takeaways

The Constitutional Court upheld the Tajani Decree's core provisions on April 30. The decree is here to stay — but the court flagged a specific constitutional question about people who were blocked from applying. That question is now being answered in lower courts across Italy, and the trend is encouraging.

On April 30, Italy's Constitutional Court issued its much-anticipated ruling on the first of four constitutional challenges to the Tajani Decree. The ruling came as no surprise following the court’s March 12 press release confirming its decision. However, we now know why they sided with the Meloni administration on the Emergency Decree’s core provisions, and, more importantly, what doors they left open for people already in the process of applying for Italian citizenship.

The Court Upheld the Decree’s Core Provisions

On March 11, the first of four constitutional challenges to the Tajani Decree was heard before Italy's highest court. The challenge, brought by a judge in Torino, was narrowly focused on two main issues:

A law cannot reach back in time and retroactively rewrite who is born Italian and who is not.
If Italian citizenship by descent has always been considered automatically acquired at birth, then the inability to have that birthright recognized is an “implicit revocation” of citizenship.

Unfortunately, the court disagreed on both counts, grounding its decision on the principle that modern citizenship should be tied to vincoli effettivi (a genuine link) with the country.

Regarding retroactivity, the court stated that Italian law may be retroactive if it is deemed in the public interest. The court then cited that pending citizenship cases grew from about 23,000 in 2022 to over 61,000 in 2024, risking a potential collapse of the system (and, therefore, providing legitimate grounds for the government to act).
Regarding revocation, the court stated that one's citizenship prior to recognition is merely a type of “virtual citizenship” (their words). By introducing this concept, the court effectively recognized a legal distinction between a recognized Italian citizen and an unrecognized one.

The Meloni administration leaned heavily on this distinction as the legal basis for its ability to reform the law retroactively without it constituting a revocation of citizenship, and the court accepted that reasoning. Since an unrecognized Italian citizen has no official obligations to the State, the State has the right to redefine the requirements for recognition of that right, referring to the new requirements as an “original preclusion.”

Three additional challenges are set to be heard before the Constitutional Court on June 9. However, the court's initial ruling is unambiguous: The Tajani Decree is here to stay, but the ruling didn't end there.

The Court Left One Specific Question Open

The Constitutional Court not only upheld the core provisions of the Tajani Decree, but it also ruled that the safe harbor clauses protecting those who have been recognized and those who have already applied were reasonable, with one major exception.

Specifically, the court stopped and flagged a question that was not asked, stating:

«Resta impregiudicata, peraltro (in quanto estranea al giudizio a quo e dunque non sollevata dal rimettente), la questione relativa alla differenziazione tra chi ha ricevuto l'appuntamento e chi ha avviato la procedura di riconoscimento della cittadinanza, ma non ha ricevuto l'appuntamento entro le 23:59 del 27 marzo 2025.»

Simply put, the court signaled a potential constitutional problem with putting the following two groups in the same category:

People who could have applied before the deadline and chose not to
People who were trying to apply but could not

This is the most important part of the ruling for people who have already begun their multi-year journey to Italian citizenship. In Italy's constitutional system, when the highest court flags a question that was not asked, it is telling future litigants and lower court judges that the question carries real constitutional weight.

That's not a footnote. It's an invitation.

Lower Court Judges Are Already Acting on That Opening

That signal didn’t land in a vacuum.

Both before and after the April 30 ruling, a growing number of lower court judges have issued favorable decisions for applicants who no longer qualify under the decree's strict generational limits but can show they were genuinely trying to apply before the deadline.

We have personally reviewed multiple favorable rulings involving post-decree filings for great-grandchildren and beyond. The cases were filed by different attorneys across multiple courts, but the reasoning behind the rulings is consistent: many judges found that the inability to meet the safe harbor clauses cannot disqualify a petitioner who clearly documented their intent to meet those very clauses before the Emergency Decree was announced.

In the rulings we reviewed, petitioners successfully established that intent through one or more of the following, all dated before the March 28 cutoff:

Registering on an Italian consulate's waitlist via PrenotaMi
PrenotaMi account creation confirmation emails
Screenshots of appointment booking attempts on PrenotaMi
A signed procura (Italian power of attorney)
A diffida (formal written notice) filed with the consulate
Email correspondence with the consulate
Written letters sent to the consulate
Being unable to attend a booked appointment due to the "Minors Issue"
Having applied at a consulate, only to be denied (or about to be denied) due to the "Minors Issue"

This is real, meaningful news for the countless people who registered on the waitlists at the Italian Consulate in New York or the Embassy in Washington, have screenshots of failed booking attempts in Houston, Los Angeles, or Philadelphia, couldn't attend an appointment in Boston or San Francisco due to the Minors Issue, or those that applied through Chicago or Miami and waited years only to be rejected for the same reason.

But it’s important to note that although these wins are real, they are not the norm (yet). The decisions vary from court to court and judge to judge. For example, we recently reviewed two decisions issued by the court in Naples. Both cases were filed with the same court, the decisions were issued just days apart, and involved petitioners who documented their inability to book a consulate appointment via PrenotaMi. One judge recognized their citizenship. The other didn't.

The case law is developing in real time, but it's moving in the right direction. The Constitutional Court's April 30 signal added formal weight to what those lower court judges were already doing, and the recent ruling from the Corte di Cassazione (Italy's Supreme Court) added significant fuel to that fire.

Italy's Supreme Court Just Gave Attorneys New Ammunition

In May 2026, the Corte di Cassazione (Italy’s Supreme Court) issued a ruling that Italian attorneys have begun to actively incorporate into pending cases nationwide.

Although some service providers are incorrectly portraying the ruling as a “dismantling of the Tajani Decree,” the ruling is genuinely positive for anyone with an active case or considering filing one.

The case involved a Colombian family whose Italian ancestor was born in Liguria in the early 1800s. The family claimed that the Italian Embassy in Bogotá published on its website that it was still processing pre-COVID applications and had no plans to begin accepting new ones. The applicants chose to pursue citizenship through the court in Genova, and the filing was successful. However, although the lower court recognized them as Italian citizens, the Italian government appealed, arguing that the applicants should have first exhausted all administrative avenues before pursuing citizenship in court.

The case eventually reached the Supreme Court on March 4, where a five-judge panel overturned the appellate court's ruling. The panel rejected the government's argument outright, not only ruling that the petitioners had a legitimate right to pursue citizenship through the courts, but also that “obstacles, difficulties, or delays that prevent even the submission of the application” are legally equivalent to a formal denial of an application.

More importantly, the Court also confirmed that chronic consulate backlogs are a recognized, documented reality that can independently establish interesse ad agire (i.e., the grounds to pursue citizenship via the court). The principle regarding consular backlogs and lack of appointments is now a fatto notorio (a known fact), meaning courts can act on it without necessarily requiring individual proof for each applicant.

In practical terms, applicants no longer need to prove from scratch that the system was broken. The courts already know it was.

Where Things Actually Stand

The Tajani Decree, as a general framework, is here to stay. Although it will be litigated for years to come, the Constitutional Court has now set the floor. The question now is how high the ceiling goes.

Three more constitutional challenges are pending, with the next hearing scheduled for June 9. Encouraging rulings continue to emerge from lower courts, and the Constitutional Court specifically flagged the following question: what happens to those who wanted to apply but were blocked by the very bureaucratic obstacles the Italian Supreme Court formally recognized this month?

If you were in process before the Tajani Decree was announced, the door is not closed. The Constitutional Court itself left it open. The direction the lower courts (and now the Supreme Court) are going is genuinely encouraging. That is not a guarantee. But they are signaling a real path forward.

italyMONDO! will keep you updated as the remaining challenges are decided and the lower court picture continues to develop. There is still a long road ahead of us, but we are in this with you.

Questions We’re Hearing From Clients

Does this ruling mean my case is over?

Not necessarily. The Constitutional Court specifically left open the question of whether people who were blocked from applying should be treated the same as those who never tried to apply. That question is real, and the recent trend with both the Supreme Court and multiple lower courts has been positive.

What does “original preclusion” mean?

Italy’s Constitutional Court needed to thread the needle between the longstanding case law holding that Italian citizenship is automatically acquired at birth and ruling that the decree does not revoke that citizenship. By framing the new law as creating an “original preclusion” to Italian citizenship, it is stating that your lineage hasn’t changed, but the legal pathway to recognition has.

What does “imprescriptible” mean?

This is a core principle cited in multiple Supreme Court decisions related to Italian citizenship jure sanguinis. “Imprescriptible” means that your right to claim citizenship by descent never expires. The Tajani Decree alters the conditions for formal recognition without altering the underlying right that was acquired at birth.

Does it matter that I have documentation showing that I wanted to apply before March 28, 2025?

Yes. Although rulings vary court by court and judge by judge, recent favorable rulings have specifically cited evidence showing that the applicants wanted to meet the safe-harbor clauses of the Tajani Decree but could not. Proof includes PrenotaMi screenshots, consulate communications, notarized Italian powers of attorney, and other documentation clearly showing intent to apply before the cutoff. It’s not a guarantee, but it is legally relevant, and the recent Supreme Court decision also lends significant weight to those arguments.

What if I started the process after March 28, 2025?

Although the decree remains in effect, the trend in both the lower courts and the Constitutional Court's own signaling suggests that carve-outs for people already in the process are a real possibility. In addition, the judges who referred the remaining challenges have specifically asked the Constitutional Court to establish a fair transitional period, which they argue is also required under EU law. This is why most people, especially those with family members still eligible under either regime, are continuing to finalize their documentation.

What does the recent Cassazione ruling mean for me?

While the Italian Constitutional Court rules on whether a law is constitutional or not, Italy’s Supreme Court decides how that law should be interpreted or applied. While the underlying case predates the Tajani Decree, the legal principle the court established applies to any case where consular obstruction prevented someone from applying.

Why are some firms saying the decree has been overturned?

Anyone in the Italian citizenship industry wants to present positive news. However, we believe that inaccurate information is dangerous, and people deserve to know the truth. So no, the decree has not been overturned. The recent Supreme Court decision, combined with a growing number of positive regional court rulings, is genuinely encouraging and leaves room for cautious optimism (especially for applicants who were legitimately in the process on March 28, 2025).

What should I do right now?

We believe that you should continue finalizing your documentation. In addition, you should organize and preserve everything you and your family have from before March 28, 2025: emails, screenshots, signed documents, and correspondence with any service provider, attorney, or consulate. The strength of any future case may depend on that record.

How many constitutional challenges are still pending?

There are currently three constitutional challenges set to be heard before the Italian Constitutional Court on June 9, 2026. A decision is expected before the summer recess (est. late July), and italyMONDO! will publish updates later this summer.

Our Company

Our Founder

Reviews

Citizenship Services

Expert Insights