By Julia Buckley, CNN
(CNN) — Since Italy became a country in 1861, there has been a surefire way to know who is and isn’t an Italian citizen: look at their parents.
The first page of the civil code, published in 1865 as the rulebook to Europe’s newest country, declared that a child born to an Italian citizen was an Italian citizen.
This founding tenet of the Bel Paese now looks set to change — ending diaspora dreams of returning to the mother country, and meaning that Italians who move abroad risk denying citizenship to their descendants.
On Thursday the Constitutional Court said it would rule in favor of the government and its controversial 2025 law that restricted citizenship for those born abroad. The law — issued last March via emergency decree — had been challenged by four judges, who questioned its constitutionality.
Now, after the first of four hearings was held on Wednesday, a statement issued by the court indicates it will support the government’s position.
“The Constitutional Court has declared the questions of constitutional legitimacy raised by the Turin court partially unfounded and partially inadmissible,” the court announced. It is expected to release a detailed verdict within the coming weeks.
The announcement will be a devastating blow for those who believed the court would uphold Italy’s 160-year history of citizenship by descent, or ius sanguinis.
“It was an extremely clear, harsh intervention, so I had a hope that it would be judged in breach of some constitutional points, but that wasn’t recognized by the court,” professor Corrado Caruso, one of the lawyers who made a case against the new law, told CNN.
Italy’s citizenship rules have been bound up with its diaspora since the country was formed.
Previously, Italians who moved abroad could pass citizenship to their children as long as they didn’t renounce or lose it, often by acquiring another nationality. What many now see as the country of the “dolce vita” was once an impoverished nation that, between 1861 and 1918, saw 16 million citizens emigrate for a better life.
Many who left out of necessity rather than volition considered themselves Italian for life, and chose to retain their citizenship while living and working abroad — meaning that citizenship, along with cultural traditions, was passed down the generations.
Established in 1865, the principle of ius sanguinis was confirmed in Italy’s first targeted citizenship law in 1912, which added a clause stipulating that Italians born and residing abroad would retain their citizenship, and then again in a law in 1992.
However, a law introduced on March 28 last year by emergency decree states that only those with a parent or grandparent born in Italy will be recognized as citizens. It also effectively outlaws dual citizenship for the diaspora, as that parent or grandparent must have held solely Italian citizenship at the time of their descendant’s birth, or at their own death if it came earlier.
‘It was politically huge’
There have long been complaints on both sides about foreign-born descendants acquiring citizenship.
For those born abroad, obtaining recognition is a long and costly process. They must source birth, marriage and death certificates from their ancestors’ hometowns (which can take years, at a cost of up to 300 euros per document), prove that nobody in their ancestral line lost their citizenship, then win an appointment at their local consulate, where waiting lists can stretch to 10 years — if they are able to get a spot on it.
Hiring a lawyer to sue the government can speed up the process, but costs can run to the tens of thousands of euros for a family.
What’s more, women were not able to transmit cit