Italy slammed the bloodline door: who still qualifies after Law 74/2025

For decades, Italy ran the most generous ancestry door in Europe. There was no generational limit. Find an Italian ancestor alive after the country existed, document an unbroken line, prove he had not naturalised elsewhere before the next birth, and the passport was yours — great-grandparent, great-great-grandparent, it did not matter. Whole cottage industries in São Paulo, Buenos Aires and New Jersey were built on that single fact.

On 27 March 2025, at one minute to midnight Rome time, that door slammed. This piece is about what is left on this side of it.

What the Tajani decree actually did

The government moved by decree — Decree-Law 36/2025, effective 29 March 2025, converted into Law No. 74/2025 on 24 May. It replaced unlimited descent with a hard generational cap. As a rule, you now qualify only if you have an Italian-born parent or grandparent. Reach back to a great-grandparent and, absent a narrow exception, the line no longer carries.

There are slivers of exception — a parent who lived in Italy for two consecutive years, certain minor cases — but the headline is brutally simple. The route that defined Italian ancestry citizenship, the one that reached back through the generations, is closed to new applicants.

The cut-off is a wall, not a ramp

Everything now turns on one timestamp. Applications filed, or consular and comune appointments confirmed, by 11:59pm Rome time on 27 March 2025 are grandfathered under the old, unlimited rules. Everyone on the wrong side of that minute is under the new cap.

There is no grace period, no transitional easing, no "in progress" mercy for the person who had gathered every document but had not yet secured the appointment. In this area the difference between a passport and a polite refusal is often a booking confirmation email with the right date on it.

The Constitutional Court did not save anyone

For a year, the hope on every forum was that the courts would strike the reform down as unconstitutional — Italy's constitution is generous about citizenship, and the challenges came fast. On 11 and 12 March 2026 the Constitutional Court delivered its answer, Judgment No. 63/2026, and it was not the rescue people wanted: the challenges were held partly unfounded and partly inadmissible. The reform stands, in full. The generational cap and the cut-off are constitutional.

My view: this is the moment to stop waiting for a reversal that is not coming and start working with the law as it is.

The 1948 route: alive, but no longer a loophole

One older path survives, and it is the most misunderstood thing in this whole area. The so-called 1948 cases — maternal lines that ordinary administrative rules historically refused, because Italian women could not pass citizenship before 1948 — still have to go through the courts rather than a consulate.

But do not read "still exists" as "still easy". The Interior Ministry's circular of 28 May 2025 takes the position that the new generational limits apply to court filings made after the 27 March cut-off too. Some lower courts disagree, the question is genuinely unsettled, and it is expected to go up to the Court of Cassation's Sezioni Unite for a unifying ruling. Treat the pre-1948 judicial route as live but contested — a matter for litigation strategy, not a brochure promise.

The details that still decide a pre-cut-off line

If you are grandfathered, the old make-or-break questions still govern your file, and they are unchanged by the reform:

• The naturalisation date. If your Italian ancestor became a citizen of his new country before the next person in the line was born, the chain broke there and no later effort repairs it.
• The "minor issue". Whether the line passed through a child who was a minor when a parent naturalised remains one of the most decisive — and most litigated — points in any application.

These were always where cases lived or died. They still are.

And it is not "buying" a passport

For completeness, because the two get muddled: none of this is citizenship by investment. You cannot pay Italy for a passport, and you can no longer pay any EU member state for one either — the European Court of Justice struck down Malta's cash-for-citizenship scheme on 29 April 2025. Descent is a claim of right, not a purchase, and the right just got a lot narrower.

Where you stand now

The verdict

Italy did not tinker with its ancestry rules. It amputated the part that made them famous. If you have a grandparent, you are fine. If you filed or booked before the cut-off, you are fine. If you are anyone else with a distant Italian surname and a vague plan, the honest answer is that the door you were counting on is shut, and the Constitutional Court has now confirmed it is staying shut.

So do two things this month, not next year. If there is any chance you are grandfathered, find the proof of the filing or appointment date and guard it like a deed. And if your hope is a maternal line before 1948, treat it as a lawsuit with an uncertain outcome, not a formality — because that is now exactly what it is.