Inside Italy is our weekly look at some of the news, talking points and gossip from Italy that you might not have heard about. It’s published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox, by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article.
As of January 1st, people applying for Italian citizenship by descent have to pay twice the previous fee (€600 as opposed to €300) to file their requests with consulates in their home countries under a contested amendment included in Italy’s latest budget bill.
The fee hike, which was first proposed by lawmakers within the ruling hard-right coalition in October and then approved by parliament in late December, has sparked vehement protests from citizenship campaigners and opposition parties.
MP Nicola Carè, from Italy’s centre-left Partito Democratico (PD), said the hike is a “punitive” and “unfair” measure intended to penalise the descendants of Italian nationals, while Fabio Porta, another MP backed by PD, said it actively seeks to “discourage citizenship requests”.
Several readers of The Local have also recently voiced their discontent over the new fee by responding to our survey.
Diane Davies, writing from the UK, said she was “frustrated for my 2 children, who now have to pay double”, while Lynne Hutton expressed “frustration beyond belief”, also mentioning that the process in her case had already involved “many apostille documents and hundreds of dollars”.
But what’s behind Italy’s decision to further increase the costs of ancestry applications, which already involve hefty expenses related to obtaining marriage, birth and death certificates of Italian ancestors, as well as translation and/or legalisation fees and postage charges?
Italy’s budget bill offers no explanation, but the original proposal, first submitted to parliament on October 9th, has all the answers we need.
After “highlighting that [...] Italy is the country that has granted the highest number of citizenships in Europe” (this is factually true; you can see the figures here), the document openly states that it wishes to “limit” recognition of the ius sanguinis, or right of blood, principle “within clearly defined and well-established parameters”.
The reason is explained shortly afterwards, as the text says that Italy’s current citizenship laws create “perpetual mechanisms that do not consider the existence of a genuine emotional bond with Italy”.
This results in “an exponential increase in the number of people born and residing abroad who obtain citizenship despite lacking a tangible connection to Italy”, hence the need to limit it.
What’s even more striking is that the consular fee hike was not the only, nor the main, proposed measure intended to limit ancestry claims, though it was the one that eventually made it all the way into Italy’s budget and into law.
Lawmakers also proposed that foreigners of Italian descent should “no longer be able to acquire Italian citizenship if their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents were all born abroad.”
Though there’s no available evidence that this measure was ever even discussed or considered in parliament, it gives an idea of the extent of the citizenship clampdown envisaged by the proponents, most of whom belong to the centre-right Forza Italia party founded by the late Silvio Berlusconi.
Draft laws proposing the introduction of limits for ancestry claims aren’t exactly new in Italy, but have all amounted to nothing so far.
A draft law put forward in June 2023 by Roberto Menia, a member of the Brothers of Italy party, sought to limit applications to the “third degree” in the line of descent (meaning applicants would only be able to go back three generations in search of an Italian ancestor), as well as introduce a language requirement.
No significant development has emerged since its submission, meaning it could reasonably be considered dead in the water at this point.
That said, I would argue that the October 2024 proposal could be seen as casting a new shadow over the future of Italy’s citizenship by descent laws.
Will the same measure (or similar restrictions) be put forward again this year? It’s hard to say at present.
But two of the parties making up the current ruling coalition (Forza Italia and Brothers of Italy, or FDI) have previously shown they intend to tighten up current citizenship regulation.
I personally believe that 2025 may bring some major (and unwelcome) developments on this front.
Inside Italy is our weekly look at some of the news and talking points in Italy that you might not have heard about. It’s published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article.
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