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- 📜 Judge Roberto Monteverde on Italian Citizenship Jure Sanguinis
📜 Judge Roberto Monteverde on Italian Citizenship Jure Sanguinis
The Challenges of Jure Sanguinis: Florence Tribunal Conference (14 March 2025)
Donatella Lenoci
April 10, 2025
KEY TAKEAWAYS
✔️ Italian courts have experienced an exponential increase in citizenship jure sanguinis cases, with Florence handling nearly 2,000 in 2024 alone.
✔️ Some judges have raised constitutional concerns about granting citizenship based solely on ancestry, without linguistic or cultural ties to Italy.
✔️ The Italian government issued an emergency decree on 28 March 2025, significantly tightening rules for citizenship by descent.
Table of Contents
The following is a quick summary of Judge Monteverde's intervention at the Conference in Florence on 14 March 2025.
A Dramatic Surge in Italian Citizenship Court Cases
Judge Roberto Monteverde is a judge at the Court of Florence.
During his intervention at the Conference held in Florence on 14 March 2025, he has highlighted the overwhelming surge in Italian citizenship applications, placing immense strain on both consulates and judicial offices.
The specialised section of the Florence Tribunal alone has handled 4,187 cases since its inception, with a dramatic escalation in recent years.
Of these, 1,187 cases have reached a final decision, while 2,670 remain pending.
The rise is particularly notable when one considers the numbers: from just a handful of cases in 2017 and 2018 to 1,962 in 2024 and already 578 in the first two months of 2025 alone.
Italian Citizenship Jure Sanguinis Court Cases Filed with the Court of Florence (Updated as of 28 February 2025)
2017: 6
2018: 1
2019: 32
2020: 13
2021: 11
2022: 429
2023: 1,255
2024: 1,962
2025 (January and February): 578
This surge is largely attributed to individuals with Italian ancestry in Latin American countries, like Brazil and Argentina, where significant Italian emigration occurred in the 19th and 20th centuries.
The Documentary Nature of the Court Cases
According to Judge Monteverde, the Italian citizenship court case is characterised by a substantially documentary nature.
Plaintiffs present vital records issued abroad, often with inconsistencies in names across generations.
Because these vital records are researched, translated, and apostilled by the plaintiffs, Judge Monteverde expressed concern that Italian judges lack the means to verify these records accurately.
Consequently, since these are contentious proceedings, but there is generally no adversarial part, no objections are raised, and this frequently results in judges accepting the plaintiffs’ reconstruction of their lineage.
Judge Monteverde expressed concern that, under these conditions, the role of the court is increasingly limited to a procedural formality - he described rulings resembling a mere rubber stamp.
The Italian Citizenship Paradox
The judge cited the work of Alessandro Giammei, who illustrated a paradox with the current jure sanguinis system:
A person who has never visited Rome in their life,
who has spent their entire life in New Jersey, for example,
can obtain
- an Italian passport,
- the right to vote for the Italian Parliament,
- and even an Italian health card,
if they are able to demonstrate that their grandfather or great-grandfather was an Italian citizen.
By contrast,
a person who was born and raised in Rome,
and perhaps studied there at a classical high school,
translating into Italian the Latin orators, […],
cannot obtain Italian citizenship before the age of 18
and before going through humiliating
and extremely complicated bureaucratic vicissitudes,
if their ancestors were not [Italian] citizens in the first place.
This disparity has raised serious questions regarding the constitutional compatibility of current citizenship legislation.
The courts in Bologna (decision 26 November 2024) and Florence (decision 7 March 2025) considered the obsolescence of the “jure sanguinis” discipline, as it is in the 1992 law, which stems from previous regulations developed in a context of Italian emigration that has now been reversed.
Both courts have raised concerns about the impact on democratic sovereignty, the definition of 'people', and the potential inclusion of non-resident populations in national political processes.
They have questioned the constitutionality of Article 1 of Law 91/1992, with specific reference to the Articles 1, 3 and 117 of the Italian Constitution.
Italy and Europe: The Question of Effective Connection
With specific reference to Article 117 of the Italian Constitution, this is in relation to Article 9 of the Treaty on European Union and Article 20 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.
Judge Monteverde referenced the 1955 Nottebohm case before the International Court of Justice, which established the principle that the granting of citizenship must involve an effective connection between the individual and the State granting it.
The Florentine court decision of 7 March 2025 emphasised the principle of territoriality, questioning the legitimacy of granting citizenship without any connection to the Italian language, culture, and historical traditions.
The Florence court, in its recent decision, has also drawn attention to the need for “legal assimilation” into the Italian community, rather than a mere automatic recognition based on distant ancestry.
In Conclusion
Judge Monteverde expressed concerns on the current [at the time of his speech, which was on the 14 March 2025] system's automatic nature, based solely on the tenuous bond of descent from a remote ancestor, particularly when dealing with millions of applicants who do not speak Italian and may have no intention of living in Italy or fulfilling the mandatory duties of political, economic, and social solidarity that the Constitution instead imposes on every citizen.
Finally, he concluded:
It is clear that everything is left to the discretion of the legislator.
In light of the above, Judge Monteverde’s intervention signalled an urgent need for parliamentary reflection on the future of Italian citizenship law, balancing the right to heritage with the obligations of democratic participation.
A couple of weeks after the conference, the legislator intervened with the Decreto Legge of 28 marzo 2025, n. 36, which imposes significant limits to the jure sanguinis principle.
A "Decreto Legge" in Italy is a provisional legislative measure adopted by the government in cases of extraordinary necessity and urgency.
It has the immediate force of law but must be converted into ordinary law by the Parliament within 60 days, otherwise it loses its effect retroactively.
The use of a Decreto Legge means that the government viewed the matter as requiring immediate action, bypassing the usual, longer parliamentary process.
The 60 days within which the decree law on Italian citizenship must be converted into law will expire on 27 May 2025.
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