The jurist Walter Fanganiello Maierovitch classified this Sunday (13), in a column published in UOL, decree-law 36 — which limits the Italian citizenship by jus sanguinis — as a “populist and legally fragile measure”. Signed by Vice Prime Minister Antonio Tajani, the rule came into force on March 28, 2025 and could affect millions of descendants outside Italy, including in Brazil.
For Maierovitch, the measure represents “the destruction of Italianness”, by breaking a historical link between immigrants and their country of origin.
“Italianness is more than a passport. It is soul, memory, identity. It is the 'being and feeling Italian', transmitted from generation to generation through language, dialect, gestures, food, music, of festivals, of religiosity and of community ethics”, wrote the jurist, professor and former judge of the Court of Justice of São Paulo.
“Shot in the heart of Italy”
For Maierovitch, who is also a commentator on the show Justice and Citizenship, from CBN Radio, the decree is a populist response to fraud in the citizenship recognition process. Instead of strengthening legal mechanisms against irregularities, the norm punishes legitimate descendants.
"Limiting jus sanguinis is, ultimately, killing Italianness. It is denying identity, origin, culture. It is transforming 'our people' into foreigners. It is shooting oneself in the foot — or rather, a shot to the heart of Italy itself.”, he warned.
The jurist also recalls that jus sanguinis is an integral part of the Italian legal tradition and that the 1948 Constitution, although it does not mention it directly, protects the rights linked to citizenship and prohibits their withdrawal.
"No one may be deprived of citizenship, declares Article 22 of the Italian Constitution”, he highlighted.
International consequences
The decree affects not only the ties with Italy, but also access to European citizenship. By cutting off recognition of Italianness, the country takes away from its descendants the right to move and live in any nation of the European Union, as provided for in the Maastricht Treaty.
The measure also applies retroactively to cases already recognized, which, according to Maierovitch, compromises legal certainty and violates fundamental constitutional principles.
"Tajani, by ignoring this, undermines democratic legality.”, concluded the jurist.
Read the full article
Decree that excludes Italian citizenship discriminates and outrages descendants.
Popular wisdom teaches us that “the world goes round”. In the 1990s, Italy’s richest man, Silvio Berlusconi, then a successful businessman and controversial figure, began to cultivate the dream of becoming prime minister with his newly created party, Forza Italia.
He still did not imagine being the protagonist of the “bunga-bunga” scandals and the “Ruby, ruba-cuore” case, involving a Moroccan minor who he, in a surreal attempt to justify the situation, said was the niece of the Egyptian dictator Mubarak.
To gain power, Berlusconi knew he had to defeat Romano Prodi, the respected university professor and then leader of the center-left. With typical political astuteness — or explicit Machiavellianism — he sponsored the recognition of the vote of Italian descendants living abroad. Electoral districts were created on several continents and consulates were instructed to speed up the recognition of citizenships by jus sanguinis. The descendants, until then ignored, became useful — electorally useful.
Italy already adopted the criterion of jus sanguinis — the right of blood — as the basis for the transmission of citizenship. This tradition predates the unification of 1861 and was reinforced by the republican Constitution of 1948, Article 22 of which states that no one may be deprived of citizenship.
However, despite the external mobilization, Prodi won the elections, not Berlusconi. The maneuver failed. But the world has turned yet again. From Berlusconi's legacy emerged the leadership of Antonio Tajani, today deputy prime minister and foreign minister in the government of Giorgia Meloni, leader of the Fratelli d'Italia party and former member of the Fascist Youth.
Tajani is the one who signs the controversial decree-law 36, of March 28, 2025. Approved as an emergency measure —without there being any real urgency— the decree drastically limits the transmission of citizenship by jus sanguinis, especially from the second generation onwards, and applies retroactive effects that threaten rights already acquired by descendants throughout the world.
The same Forza Italia party that once encouraged citizenship to win votes abroad has now become the Forza Italia that “taglia la cittadinanza”—cuts citizenship. “O tempora, o mores!” would shout Cicero, whose bust still rests in the Italian Senate and whose legal spirit seems to have been ignored.
Italianness
Italianness is more than a passport. It is soul, memory, identity. It is “being and feeling Italian”, transmitted from generation to generation through language, dialect, gestures, food, music, of festivals, of religiosity and of community ethics. It is something that is inherited naturally and transmitted with affection.
Want to feel Italian? Read “Brás, Bexiga and Barra Funda”, by António de Alcântara Machado. This columnist was born in the Barra Funda neighborhood, a stronghold of immigrants from the Mezzogiorno. São Paulo, the largest Italian city outside Italy, breathes Italian. Its Dante Alighieri school, the largest outside Italy, has never asked the Italian government for a cent.
Rodolfo Crespi, an industrialist and immigrant, founded Juventus da Mooca: he chose the name of one team and the colors of another—Torino. A symbolic gesture of unity in the diversity of the peninsular identity.
By cutting off citizenship, Tajani cuts this link. He condemns Italianness to extinction in a few generations.
Citizenship and its soul
Citizenship is, legally, the status that binds a person to a State. In the case of Italy, however, there is an intangible element: the soul of citizenship is Italianness.
It was this soul that comforted immigrants in the face of longing and distance. It is this soul that leads their descendants, even unconsciously, to prefer an Illy espresso, a Barilla pasta, a Mutti sauce. They are natural propagandists of “made in Italy.”
The spirit of the native is often that of the partisan — the resister, the defender of freedom. Luciano Canfora, a great Italian intellectual, wrote in 2025: “Il fascismo non è mai morto” (Fascism never died). The Tajani decree is, in its essence, authoritarian. It echoes a past that the 1948 Constitution promised to bury.
Piero Calamandrei, one of the fathers of this Constitution, taught that it was born where the partisans fell. Each section of the constitutional text is a legacy of struggle and sacrifice. It prohibits discrimination, ensures equality and guarantees fundamental rights. And, although it does not explicitly mention jus sanguinis, it is rooted in the Italian legal tradition, consolidated by centuries of practice.
Tajani, by ignoring this, is violating democratic legality.
By cutting citizenship, Italy not only makes its descendants foreigners on their own ancestral soil. It also makes them, by extension, foreigners in all countries of the European Union, thanks to the Maastricht Treaty. In other words: millions of descendants lose their citizenship. Italian citizenship and, with it, the European one.
And all this with the justification of fighting the “citizenship industry”.
Organized crime
But fraud cannot be combated with a decree-law. That is what criminal law, the Public Prosecutor's Office and the judicial police are for. Italy has experience and expertise in tackling organized crime. It has already carried out operations that dismantled fraudulent schemes involving the sale of citizenship, resulting in arrests, convictions and cancellation of documents.
Brazil, in turn, has had a judicial cooperation agreement with Italy since the time of Fernando Henrique Cardoso. It also allows the extradition of naturalized citizens in cases of serious crimes.
Instead of legislating with populism, it would be enough to apply good administrative practices, such as the official accreditation of legal service providers and dispatchers. Repression should fall on criminals, not on innocent legitimate descendants.
Decree-Law 36 does not solve the problem. It makes it worse. It is a populist measure, legally fragile, socially unjust and historically short-sighted. Limiting jus sanguinis is, ultimately, killing Italianness. It is denying identity, origin, culture. It is transforming “our people” into foreigners. It is a shot in the foot — or rather, a shot in the heart of Italy itself.
Published in UOL
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