Italy's top administrative court has ruled that millions of people with Italian ancestry abroad no longer qualify for Italian citizenship, upending one of the world's most generous citizenship-by-descent regimes.

The ruling, handed down by the Council of State in Rome, decisively narrows who can claim citizenship jure sanguinis — by right of blood. For decades, Italy allowed anyone who could document an unbroken line to an Italian-born ancestor, with no generational limit, to apply for a passport. That door is now substantially closed for the descendants of Italians who emigrated generations ago.

Who loses the right to apply?

The decision targets the largest group in the queue: descendants of Italians who left the country during the mass emigration waves of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Tens of millions of people worldwide — concentrated in Argentina, Brazil, the United States and other countries that absorbed Italian migrants — can trace ancestry to those departures. CNN reported that the ruling tells millions with Italian roots they have lost the right to citizenship.

Under the court's reasoning, citizenship cannot pass indefinitely down the family line. Claims built on great-grandparents and more remote ancestors no longer meet the legal threshold, and applicants in that category face rejection.

What does the ruling change in practice?

The judgment converts a previously expansive reading of Italy's 1912-era descent rules into a restrictive one. Its practical effects:

• Applicants whose only Italian link is a great-grandparent or a more distant ancestor can no rely on that line.
• Pending applications built on distant ancestry are likely to fail under the new standard.
• People who already hold Italian citizenship are not the focus of the ruling — the change concerns who may newly acquire it.
• Claims through closer ancestry remain the surviving route for future applicants.

Why did the court act now?

Italian consulates, particularly in the Americas, have faced a surge of descent-based applications in recent years, producing backlogs that stretched for years at some posts. Courts in Brazil had ordered Italian authorities to process thousands of claims, and the volume of applications kept climbing. The ruling responds to that pressure by cutting off the outermost categories of eligibility rather than expanding consular capacity.

The decision also aligns the judiciary with a political shift in Rome. The government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has moved to tighten citizenship-by-descent rules, and the court's verdict removes the legal foundation that had allowed unlimited generational claims.

What should affected applicants do now?

Anyone with a pending or planned application should check the current position of the Italian consulate or prefecture handling their case, and monitor guidance from Italy's Ministry of the Interior and Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The ruling changes eligibility assessments, so outcomes will depend on how close the documented ancestor is.

This article reports the court decision and does not provide individual legal advice. Readers with specific cases should consult the official Italian authorities or a qualified Italian citizenship lawyer for guidance on how the ruling applies to their documentation.