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.
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:
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.
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 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:
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.