![Attorney Marco Mellone during oral arguments at the Court of Cassation in Rome, at the United Sections hearing on the 'child issue' | Photo: Reproduction/[source of the video]](https://italianismo.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/marco-mellone-600x337.jpg)
A statement submitted by the Italian government itself to the European Court of Justice. for more than three decades This could return to the center of the debate about Italian citizenship by descent.
In the Micheletti case, judged by Court of Justice of the European Communities In 1992, Italy maintained that citizenship acquired by jus sanguinis is inherent to the person, is acquired "by original right," and has a "permanent and effective" character, even when the citizen also holds the nationality of another country. This position is documented in the official records of case C-369/90, preserved in EUR-Lex.
This passage is particularly relevant today because the Italian Constitutional Court has just sent a question to Luxembourg concerning the rule in Law 74/2025, according to which certain people born abroad should be considered as if they had never acquired Italian citizenship.
What Italy said in Luxembourg
Mario Vicente Micheletti was born in Rosario, Argentina, in 1935. He was Argentinian by birth and an Italian citizen by descent. The case reached the European Court because Spain sought to have his Argentinian citizenship prevail and, therefore, deny him rights arising from the citizenship of a member state.
The Supreme Court reaffirmed: citizenship is born with the person.
- New legal front opened
- Processes can still be filed.
- Individual assessment before any decision.
In the written phase of the process, the Italian government submitted observations recorded in Audience report (see end of article)This is an official document summarizing the positions of the parties. According to Italy, under Law 555/1912, "Italian citizenship is acquired by birth based on 'ius sanguinis' (right of blood)."
The document then records the government's conclusion: "the Italian citizenship claimed by Mr. Micheletti is a permanent and effective citizenship according to Italian law [...] and acquired by original right based on a link with the State of belonging."
And he adds that the conclusion remained valid. “anche in presence of concomitant Argentine cittadinanza”That is, even with the simultaneous possession of Argentine citizenship. This detail is important because the possession of another citizenship by someone born abroad is... precisely one of the criteria used by the new legislation to limit recognition.
What does this have to do with the Tajani Law?
Article 3-bis of Law 91/1992, introduced by Decree-Law 36/2025 and converted into Law 74/2025, stipulates that the affected persons shall be considered as “I will never again acquire the Italian city”In other words, as if they had never acquired citizenship.
It was this interpretation that allowed the Constitutional Court, in ruling 63/2026, to dismiss the idea that the reform removed an existing citizenship. According to the Consultation, the 3-bis does not represent loss or revocation, but an "original preclusion to the acquisition of Italian citizenship." Without citizenship to lose, part of the European jurisprudence on the deprivation of Union citizenship would not apply in the same way.
The safety of this building was short-lived. Ordinance 147/2026In a petition filed on July 23, the Court itself suspended three proceedings and asked the Court of Justice of the European Union whether Articles 9 of the Treaty on European Union and 20 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU allow for this "original preclusion" against persons born abroad before the entry into force of the rule and who hold another citizenship.
The question that Micheletti puts on the table
The central question can be formulated simply: when a descendant of an Italian acquired citizenship under the previous system, at what point did this acquisition occur? At birth, or only when a consulate, a comune, or a court formally recognized the situation?
The Italian position of 1992 answers clearly: by birth. The same logic reappeared decades later in the United Sections of Cassation, for whom citizenship by birth is acquired by original title and the status, once acquired, is permanent and imprescriptible.
The consequence of this distinction is enormous. If subsequent recognition merely declares a citizenship already acquired, a 2025 law that mandates treating someone born decades earlier as if they “never acquired” citizenship would not be modifying the conditions of a future acquisition. It would be retroactively altering the legal classification of a past fact. This is the tension that is now reaching Luxembourg.
There is a relevant difference: Micheletti already possessed recognized citizenship, consular registration, and an Italian passport, and it is probably on this point that the government will try to distinguish the precedent from current cases. But the answer raises another question. Did the recognition create Micheletti's citizenship or did it merely confirm what existed from birth? In 1991, Italy itself spoke of... “a cittadinanza acquired by birth”, a citizenship acquired by birth.
Micheletti does not overturn the Tajani Law
It would be an exaggeration to claim that the precedent alone invalidates Article 3-bis. The 1992 ruling dealt primarily with freedom of establishment, and the Court decided that Spain could not impose additional conditions to recognize the effects of Micheletti's Italian citizenship.
From that judgment, however, emerged a principle that would become central to European jurisprudence, dlater developed in cases such as Rottmann and Tjebbes.Each State has the power to define the conditions for acquiring and losing its nationality, but must exercise this power while respecting the law of the Union.
Therefore, Micheletti does not offer a ready-made answer to Article 3-bis. He offers a historical piece of the Italian legal position itself on the nature of citizenship iure sanguinis, which is difficult to ignore now that Luxembourg will have to decide whether that original acquisition can be treated, decades later, as if it had never happened.
The Constitutional Court's decision changed the landscape. The new citizenship law will now be reviewed by the European Union's courts of justice.
According to the new law, certain people “never acquired” citizenship. For the Italian government in the Micheletti case, citizenship was acquired at birth, by original, permanent, and effective right. The statements come from different legal contexts and are not equivalent. But they also cannot be treated as if they were unrelated.
(Based on information from EUR-Lex, case C-369/90)
![Attorney Marco Mellone during oral arguments at the Court of Cassation in Rome, at the United Sections hearing on the 'child issue' | Photo: Reproduction/[source of the video]](https://italianismo.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/marco-mellone-100x100.jpg)
Mark
29 July 2026 19 at: 13
Thank you for keeping us informed, congratulations!!!
John Robert Di Napoli
29 July 2026 19 at: 26
Italian citizenship, with the infamous Tajani decree, has turned into a farce, a circus where the clowns are the "origins."
Isabel Maria Alves Mezzalira
29 July 2026 22 at: 05
Endless legal debates don't deter the descendants of Italian couples who fled an impoverished Italy and were welcomed, for better or worse, in countries like Brazil. I carry an Italian surname and I'm proud of it. I didn't know my great-grandparents, but I knew a great-aunt who lived until the 1960s! My aunt died at one hundred years old! My father's entire family was composed of Italians with varied surnames: Fratin, Pavan, Belgrano, Milani, Tintori… and yet I don't have the right to recognition? My DNA proves my origins and I am Italian, inside and out…