23/07/2026
THE ITALIAN JOB REACHES LUXEMBOURG
The Italian Constitutional Court has now issued its procedural order following the hearing of June 9, 2026.
In doing so, the Court expressly reaffirmed the conclusions already reached in Judgment No. 63/2026, deposited on April 30, 2026, concerning the compatibility of Decree Law No. 36/2025, later converted into Law No. 74/2025, with the Italian Constitution. The Constitutional Court has therefore not reopened the constitutional debate under Italian law. On the contrary, it has confirmed that it continues to adhere to the reasoning and conclusions set out in Judgment No. 63/2026.
The remaining issue is now a different one: whether the new citizenship legislation, although considered compatible with the Italian Constitution, is also compatible with European Union law.
For that reason, the Constitutional Court has referred the case to the Court of Justice of the European Union for a preliminary ruling.
This is a significant procedural development, and one that we welcome.
The referral has been made directly by the Italian Constitutional Court. We therefore do not need to wait for another trial court, a Court of Appeal or the Supreme Court to bring the European dimension of this legislation before the CJEU. The issue has now reached Luxembourg much earlier than we had anticipated.
The proceedings before the CJEU will be limited to the compatibility of the new legislation with European Union law. Once the European Court has provided its interpretation, the Italian Constitutional Court will resume the proceedings and issue its decision in light of that ruling.
The referral also places what we have often described as the Italian Job before the European legal order.
Several Member States—including France, Germany, Ireland, Portugal and Spain, among others—have reformed their nationality laws by introducing generational limits, registration requirements, residence conditions or other rules governing the transmission of citizenship by descent. However, those reforms generally included transitional mechanisms or a reasonable period allowing affected individuals to adapt to the new legal framework.
Italy chose a radically different approach. Decree Law No. 36/2025 was adopted overnight and relied upon a deadline that had already expired the previous day. Individuals who had been born Italian under the law applicable at the time of their birth were suddenly prevented from obtaining formal recognition of that status unless they had completed one of the limited procedural steps identified by the new legislation before a deadline they could not have known would exist.
We are therefore particularly eager to read the written observations that may be submitted by the European Commission and by the other Member States.
For the first time, those Member States will be asked to express their views on an approach that appears to have no real equivalent in their own citizenship reforms: the retroactive introduction of a deadline restricting a fundamental right, without any meaningful transitional period for individuals whose legal status had arisen at birth under the law then in force.
The CJEU's ruling will have implications well beyond Italy. It may become an important precedent for every Member State considering whether, and to what extent, citizenship rights connected to European Union citizenship can be restricted retroactively.
At the same time, My Lawyer in Italy must look beyond the importance of the referral itself.
Our immediate responsibility is to our clients whose cases are currently pending before Italian courts, as well as to those whose petitions are ready to be filed.
Over the coming days, the firm will carefully assess the practical implications of this procedural order together with an enlarged group of independent citizenship attorneys and the constitutional law scholars who provide the firm with independent academic consultation.
A more comprehensive litigation strategy will be developed over the coming weeks. The summer judicial recess will also provide an important opportunity to prepare the next phase of this challenge.
Our initial assessment is that trial courts will retain a certain degree of discretion in deciding how to manage pending proceedings while awaiting the CJEU's ruling.
Italian case law contains two opposing Supreme Court precedents. An older decision from 1999 considered the suspension of proceedings in similar circumstances illegitimate, while a later decision from 2006 considered suspension legitimate. There is no consolidated approach, and the more recent decision cannot automatically be regarded as prevailing merely because of its date.
It is therefore likely that the President of each of the twenty-six court sections handling citizenship cases will determine how that particular court intends to proceed.
Recent experience suggests that different courts may adopt different solutions.
During the Bologna constitutional proceedings in 20242025, a limited number of courts, including Rome, suspended cases, while others simply adjourned hearings to a later date.
More recently, in connection with the constitutional referrals originating from Turin, Mantua and Campobasso in 2025 and 2026, courts generally adjourned hearings and then issued their decisions following the Constitutional Court’s press release of March 12, 2026, and Judgment No. 63/2026 of April 30, 2026.
We therefore expect divergent decisions once again.
Some courts may suspend proceedings pending the CJEU's ruling. Others may simply postpone hearings. Others may continue deciding cases and reject requests for postponement or suspension.
This creates uncertainty, but uncertainty is inherent in any major constitutional and European legal challenge. The absence of certainty has never been a reason to abandon a principled legal challenge.
The current legislation was designed to prevent individuals who were born Italian from obtaining recognition under the law applicable at the time of their birth. Challenging that system requires persistence, strategic litigation and, inevitably, the acceptance of legal risk and sacrifice.
Our responsibility is not only to welcome an important referral to the CJEU. It is also to determine the most appropriate strategy for each pending case and for every case that is ready to be filed.
Those decisions will be taken carefully, collectively and with the benefit of the strongest constitutional, European and citizenship-law expertise available to us.
At My Lawyer in Italy, our commitment remains unchanged.
We will continue to pursue every available remedy, before every competent court and at every level of justice, until it is affirmed that rights existing at birth cannot lawfully be extinguished by retroactive legislation and that their deprivation is incompatible with both the Italian constitutional order and European Union law.
