Italian Citizenship by Descent

For over a century, Italian law recognised anyone descended from an Italian citizen as a citizen too, with no limit on how many generations back that connection was — as long as the chain of citizenship was never broken. This principle is known as jure sanguinis (“law of the blood”).

That changed on 28 March 2025. The Italian government issued Decree-Law No. 36/2025 — widely known as the “Tajani Decree” after Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani — which was converted into Law No. 74/2025 on 24 May 2025. Italy’s Constitutional Court upheld the law in a ruling deposited on 30 April 2026, so it remains current. The rest of this page explains what the old rules were, what has changed, and where our own family’s claim stands.

The old rules

Under the pre-2025 system, the main condition of jure sanguinis was that at the time of each ancestor’s birth, their Italian parent needed to still be an Italian citizen (even if not officially recognised as such at the time). The main ways this chain could break:

An ancestor naturalised in another country.
An ancestor was still a minor when their parent naturalised in another country.

There was no generational cap. A great-great-grandchild of an Italian emigrant could, in principle, still claim citizenship provided the chain was intact.

What the Tajani Decree changed

The decree inserted a new Article 3-bis into Italy’s 1992 citizenship law. It states that anyone born abroad who holds another citizenship is now treated as having never automatically acquired Italian citizenship, unless they meet one of a narrow set of exceptions. In practice, automatic transmission by descent is now capped at two generations: to qualify, a person generally needs

an Italian-born parent (or adoptive parent), or
a parent who lived in Italy for two consecutive years before the applicant’s birth or adoption, or
an Italian-born grandparent.

Anyone further removed than that — a great-grandchild or beyond — no longer qualifies automatically, regardless of how unbroken the paper trail is.

There’s a cutoff date built into the law: applications or court cases already filed, or consular appointments already confirmed, by 23:59 Rome time on 27 March 2025 continue to be assessed under the old, uncapped rules. Everyone else falls under the new two-generation limit, including “1948 cases” (see below) filed in Italian courts after 24 May 2025.

The one exception that overrides all of this: if the new rule would leave someone stateless, the restriction doesn’t apply.

Where this leaves the “1948 case” route

Before 1948, Italian law didn’t allow women to pass on citizenship — only fathers could. In 2009 the Court of Rome ruled that this was unconstitutional, opening the door to descendants of Italian women claiming citizenship through a judicial application, known as a “1948 case.”

This is the route that applies to our family. Bartolo Santamaria naturalised in Australia in 1904, when his son Giuseppe was 18 — still a minor at the time — so Giuseppe lost his Italian citizenship in 1904, eleven years before his first child was born. None of Giuseppe’s children inherited citizenship through him. Giuseppe’s wife, Maria Terzita, never naturalised and held her Italian citizenship until she died, so their children inherited citizenship through her — but only via the 1948 case mechanism, since she was a woman transmitting citizenship before 1948.

In February 2020, eleven descendants of John Santamaria had this claim recognised by the Court of Rome, confirmed as Italian citizens from birth through Maria Terzita. That judgment stands; it isn’t affected by the 2025 changes.

For any descendant of Maria Terzita who hasn’t yet had their citizenship recognised, though, the Tajani Decree matters a great deal. A 1948 case is still a court case, and under the new law it’s subject to the same two-generation cap as an administrative application unless it was filed before the 27 March 2025 cutoff. So whether a currently unrecognised descendant can still succeed will depend on how many generations separate them from Maria Terzita, and whether an application was already lodged before that date. This is worth checking individually with a lawyer rather than assuming the earlier family precedent still applies automatically — the 2020 judgment shows the lineage itself is sound, but it no longer guarantees the same outcome for everyone further down the family tree.

Case Studies

In February 2020, 11 descendants of John Santamaria received a favourable judgement from the Court of Rome, deeming them to be Italian citizens from birth. Their lineage was traced through Maria Terzita, as she never naturalised in Australia and her Italian citizenship remained intact. They used the legal services of Andrea Permunian at Italian Citizenship Assistance.

Tips

The Dual U.S-Italian Citizenship Facebook group is a good source of first-hand experience on 1948 cases and how they’re being handled post-2025.
If you’re descended from Maria Terzita and haven’t yet applied, get advice on your specific generational distance and filing history before assuming the 2020 precedent covers you.