By Avvocato Stabilito Iso

It is critical to begin by clarifying the nature of the news reaching us from the Constitutional Court. What we are currently analyzing is not a full ruling (sentenza), but a preliminary press release issued on March 12 regarding the Turin case.

At this stage, we do not yet have the full reasoning behind the Court’s decision. This distinction is vital because, while the Court has signaled that it found certain questions inadmissible and rejected others, we must wait for the full published text to understand the legal boundaries they have drawn. We cannot yet provide a final appraisal, but we can offer our first impressions of where the battle for jus sanguinis stands.

Is the Retroactivity Clause Totally Closed?

The current consensus among our legal team is that the door has only closed on the specific, narrow arguments presented by the Turin referral. The Court appears to have rejected Turin’s claim that the law created an arbitrary distinction between application dates, but this does not constitute a blanket approval of the law’s constitutionality.

Turin’s arguments were largely limited to Article 3 (equality and reasonableness) and a few international treaties. The Court ultimately ruled these were either inapplicable or, in their view, poorly argued. Crucially, while Turin suggested the law was an implicit revocation of citizenship, they failed to ground this argument in the absolute nature of citizenship as an inviolable right protected by the broader constitutional framework—a framework that the pending referrals from Mantova and Campobasso have explicitly invoked.

The Stronger Architecture: Mantova and Campobasso

The upcoming cases provide a much more comprehensive legal architecture. Where Turin may have faltered, these referrals offer a more rigorous challenge to the retroactivity clause through several distinct pillars:

• Procedural Illegitimacy: Unlike Turin, the Mantova referral challenges the use of a Decree-Law to modify a status as fundamental as citizenship. It argues that changing the rules of belonging to the national community is a constitutional matter that cannot be handled by executive decree. If the Court finds the method violated Articles 72 and 77, the entire retroactivity clause could fall on procedural grounds alone.

• The Article 22 Protection: A significant barrier that remains untested is Article 22, which explicitly forbids stripping citizenship for political motives. The Campobasso cases argue that this decree is, in effect, a political deprivation. This specific constitutional protection was not a focus of the Turin case.

• Precise EU Challenges: While the Court rejected Turin’s broad appeal to EU principles, the other referrals rely on specific European Court of Justice rulings (such as Tjebbes and X v Udlændinge- og Integrationsministeriet). These cases mandate an individualized assessment before the loss of citizenship occurs, arguing that an automatic, blanket retroactive loss is a violation of EU law that Turin simply didn’t articulate with the necessary precision.

The “Saving Interpretation” of the Supreme Court

Beyond the Constitutional Court, the Sezioni Unite of the Supreme Court may still provide what we call a “saving interpretation.” Even if the Constitutional Court finds the law itself legitimate in a vacuum, the Supreme Court has the final say on how that law is applied in practice.

The Supreme Court has consistently ruled that citizenship is permanent and imprescriptible. They possess the power to interpret the Tajani Decree in a way that protects those who have already established their right to citizenship, effectively bypassing the harshest retroactive effects and shielding those caught in the current “citizenship maze.”

The Road Ahead

The press release is a narrow snapshot of a single, limited challenge. The wider battle, rigorously substantiated and more persuasively argued will take place on three critical dates:

• April 14: When the Supreme Court hears the challenge regarding the legal scope of citizenship by descent.

• June 9: When the more robust referrals from Mantova is heard before the Constitutional Court.

• TBD: The two referrals from Campobasso will eventually be scheduled and heard before the Constitutional Court.

We are only at the beginning of the judicial reasoning. We remain confident that the most cogent and persuasive arguments are still to come.