The United Chambers of the Court of Cassation have resolved one of the most important disputes of recent years on Italian citizenship by descent. By judgment number 24045 of 2026, published on 26 July, the Court ruled that a child born abroad with Italian citizenship and that of the country of birth preserved both even if the Italian parent, later, was naturalized foreign national.
The decision concerns the so-called “minority question”, known among Italian communities abroad as minor issue. In the last three years a new interpretation of the law had brought consulates, municipalities and tribunals to consider interrupted the line of citizenship when the Italian ancestor had naturalized while the son was still underage. For many descendants of emigrants in the United States, Brazil, Argentina and other countries that attribute citizenship by birth on the territory, this interpretation made it impossible to obtain recognition.
The case examined by the Cassation concerned a family native to Bellunese. Rina Laveder, born in Gosaldo in 1923, emigrated to Venezuela and had a son, Gustavo Alfredo Monasterios, in 1946. The child was Italian by descent from his mother and Venezuelan because he was born in Venezuela. In 1954, when she was seven years old, Laveder obtained Venezuelan citizenship and lost the Italian citizenship according to the law then in force.
“It’s an important sentence that tells us what was always the interpretation of the law for decades before 2022-23. The new interpretation from 2022 was based on the fact that the ‘family child’ exercised a choice of renunciation for the whole family, when they actually exercised a single choice. On the basis of this question thousands of legitimate questions of citizenship, often of direct children of Italian citizens, have been rejected in recent months; now the State must commit itself to reopening them and facilitating the process of all those who had already applied” said Christian Di Sanzo, Deputy North and Central America.
In 2021, the Court of Rome rejected the application for recognition submitted by Monasterios and his family members, claiming that the naturalization of the mother had produced the loss of citizenship for her child. The Court of Appeal confirmed the decision in 2023. The United Sections have now settled that judgment and postponed the case to the Court of Appeal of Rome, which will have to examine it by applying the principles laid down by the Court of Cassation. The facts and the full text of the decision are contained in the measure published by the Court.
The dispute was derived from the relationship between two articles of law number 555 of 1912, which for eighty years ruled Italian citizenship. Article 7 dealt with the children of Italian citizens born and resident in countries where lo ius solo. These people owned two small towns from birth and kept the Italian one, except for a renunciation expressed after reaching the age.
Article 12 regulated the case of a minor who owned only Italian citizenship and subsequently acquired another as a result of the naturalization of the living parent. In this situation the loss of parental citizenship could extend to the child.
For over a century the Italian administration had held separate the two hypotheses. A child born in the United States, for example, was already American from birth: the subsequent American naturalization of his father or mother did not make him acquire a citizenship he already possessed. The child continued to be also Italian. The Cassation recalled that this reading was supported by the Council of State and by various circulars of the Interior and Foreign Ministry.
The situation changed with some decisions of the Court of Cassation between 2023 and 2024, including ordinances 17161/2023, 3564/2024 and 454/2024. According to this orientation, the loss of parental citizenship could lead to the loss of the child’s child, even when the child already had a foreign citizenship from birth.
In October 2024, the Interior Ministry adopted this reading with circular number 43347. Consulates and communes were educated to consider the transmission interrupted if the Italian parent had naturalized during the younger age of the living son. The criterion was also applied to children born in the United States and other countries who automatically attribute citizenship on the basis of ius alone.
The United Sections have now rejected that interpretation. According to the Court, the word “purchase” used in Article 12 indicates a citizenship obtained by the child following the choice of the parent. It does not include a citizenship possessed since birth. For children born with two citizens only Article 7 applies: Italian status could be lost through a conscious renunciation completed after age, or in cases provided for by specific international treaties.
The judgment also clarifies that the principle is equal when citizenship comes from the mother. The decisions of the Constitutional Court which have equated men and women in the transmission of citizenship also produce effects on the consequences of the naturalization of the parent.
The pronunciation of the United Sections has a greater weight than the decisions taken by the individual sections of the Court of Cassation and serves precisely to resolve the internal disputes in the case-law. The judges who will examine similar cases will therefore have a very clearly-adjusted orientation to follow. The decision, alone, does not formally cancel the circular of 2024: the Interior Ministry will have to decide how to update the indications addressed to consulates, prefectures and municipalities.
The effects on individual questions will also depend on their history. The judicial proceedings initiated within the period laid down in the reform of 2025 will continue to be examined in accordance with the previous rules and will benefit directly from the new principle. The administrative applications submitted in time and still pending should be reassessed without applying the “minority question”, once the ministerial instructions are adjusted. The already definitive dinieges, however, are not automatically reopened by the Cassation.
Then the problem of the reform approved in 2025 with the so-called Tajani decree, converted into law number 74. The new article 3-bis of the law on citizenship considers that Italian citizenship has never been acquired by those who were born abroad and already owns another, except for some exceptions. Among these are the administrative or judicial questions submitted by 23:59 of 27 March 2025, the presence of a parent or grandfather exclusively Italian and the residence in Italy of a parent for at least two years continuous before the birth of the child. The coordinated text of the reform therefore limits the new demands even when the lineage has exceeded the “minority question”.
The legitimacy of this part of the reform is still under discussion. On 23 July the Constitutional Court referred the question to the Court of Justice of the European Union, asking whether the new preclusion is compatible with European Union citizenship rules. The procedure concerns a problem distinct from that decided by the Cassation and will have its own time.
The judgment of 26 July closed the conflict on the interpretation of the law of 1912: an already Italian and foreign child from birth did not lose Italian citizenship for a decision taken by the parent during his younger age. However, new questions remain the limits introduced in 2025. The “minority question” has been resolved in the courts; its consequences in the consular and communal offices will now depend on the adaptation of procedures.
L’articolo The Cassation closes the question of dual citizenship of minors proviene da IlNewyorkese.
