Introduction:
In this case, the Court of Venice examined an application filed by foreign descendants seeking recognition of Italian citizenship by descent from an Italian-born ancestor who emigrated abroad and never acquired foreign citizenship nor renounced Italian citizenship. The applicants reconstructed their genealogical line through official civil-status documentation demonstrating uninterrupted descent from the Italian ancestor.
Outcome:
The Court granted the application and declared the applicants Italian citizens jure sanguinis from birth. It ordered the Ministry of the Interior, through the competent Civil Status Registrar, to carry out all registrations, transcriptions, and annotations required by law, including communications to the competent consular authorities. Legal costs were fully offset between the parties.
Challenge:
The central issue concerned the presence of transmissions of citizenship through the maternal line prior to the entry into force of the Italian Constitution. Under the legislation then in force, citizenship could generally be transmitted only through the paternal line, and Italian women could lose citizenship automatically upon marriage to a foreign citizen. The Court reviewed the constitutional and Supreme Court jurisprudence that progressively removed these discriminatory provisions. In particular, it recalled the Constitutional Court judgments that declared unconstitutional both the automatic loss of citizenship by women upon marriage and the exclusion of maternal transmission of citizenship. The Court also relied on the landmark ruling of the Supreme Court Joint Sections, which recognized that descendants of Italian women affected by the pre-1948 regime are entitled to judicial recognition of citizenship.
Action:
After examining the documentation submitted, the Court found that the applicants had established a direct line of descent from an Italian citizen and that no evidence had been presented of any interruption in the transmission of citizenship. It reaffirmed that citizenship is an original, inalienable, and imprescriptible status that may be asserted at any time and that the burden of proving any interruption rests with the State.
The Court further clarified that the discriminatory effects of the pre-1948 legal framework continued beyond the entry into force of the Constitution and that citizenship must therefore be recognized in favor of descendants whose claims derive from an Italian female ancestor. Since no renunciation or other extinguishing event was established, the Court confirmed that citizenship had been validly transmitted through the maternal line and granted recognition of Italian citizenship from birth.
For the privacy of our clients, all names are fictional, and any identifying details in the judgements have been obscured.