The Italian government's slowness in responding to citizenship applications has become a chronic problem, now weighing heavily on public coffers. In the recent ruling # 9630 / 2025, the Regional Administrative Court (TAR) of Lazio ordered the Ministry of the Interior to bear the costs of a case after more than a decade of waiting for an applicant.
Since 2015, an Albanian citizen has been trying, without success, to have her right, guaranteed by law, to obtain the Italian citizenship for legal residence of more than ten years. While her husband received the document within two years, she faced a succession of delays, weak justifications, and a lack of proper document analysis.
The Ministry's justification even included a report of an alleged crime from 2006, unconfirmed by the courts, and questioned the family's income despite regular tax returns. The TAR found that there were no new elements to justify the denial and, worse, that the delay violated legal deadlines, both before the two-year deadline and even after the amendment of the so-called Salvini Decree, which extended the limit to four years.
In practice, citizenship was only granted in 2022, when the case was already under trial. Even so, the Court ruled that the public administration could not absolve itself of responsibility for the unjustified delay. As a result, it not only recognized the citizen's right but also ordered the Ministry to pay the legal costs.
The case exposes a routine. There are hundreds of similar lawsuits pending in the Italian courts, where foreigners who meet the legal requirements see their applications stagnate for years. The lack of structure, cumbersome bureaucracy, and delays in simple processes increase the number of lawsuits against the State itself.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of the Interior, under the command of Matteo Piantedosi, accumulates legal defeats and extra expenses that could be avoided with faster and more efficient processes. The issue highlights the contrast between the requirement for applicants to comply with rules and the State's failure to meet its own deadlines.
A bill that, in the end, falls on the Italian taxpayer.
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