The president of the Court of Appeals of Venice, Rita Rigoni, stated that the new legislation on Italian citizenship, in force since March 2025, has not been able to contain the volume of lawsuits. The statement was made this Friday (30), during the ceremony of Opening of the Judicial Year.
Rigoni highlighted that the number of cases continues to grow, especially in the section specializing in international protection. "Unfortunately, we must also acknowledge this year the enormous backlog of cases in this section," he stated.
According to the judge, the data proves the continued overload: 30.728 citizenship-related cases were pending. Court of Venice as of June 30, 2025. This number represents 78,90% of the cases in the specialized section, 65,85% of all litigation in the court, and approximately 44% of citizenship-related lawsuits currently being processed in Italy.
Rigoni also drew attention to the disproportion between demand and available resources. "Despite being a district court, the number of human and material resources is certainly lower than that of the large metropolitan courts," he stated.
Clean impactistate of the reforms
The new legislation, resulting from the Tajani Decree, brought changes to the criteria for the recognition of citizenship and to the collection of the unified contribution, which became 600 euros per applicant. The government's intention was to curb the increase in applications through the courts.
However, Rigoni assessed that the effect of the changes was modest. “The reforms at the point of…” unified contribution "And regarding the requirements for obtaining citizenship, the latter under review by the Constitutional Court, they have only allowed for a slight decrease in new applications," he said.
Even with the changes, between January 1st and September 22nd, 2025, 10.660 new cases were registered in court., a number equivalent to the total number of cases opened throughout the year 2023.
The president reiterated that the situation requires attention, as Venice remains the country's main hub for the volume of litigation concerning Italian citizenship.
FOLLOW-US
Samuel Rancatti
February 1, 2026 at 06:37 am
And it tends to get worse, with the incredible idea of centralizing citizenship, an idea that makes it seem like the Italian government is doing us a favor or giving us citizenship as a gift, when it is our right, because we don't "become" citizens, we are Italian citizens from birth. What the government does is recognize our status as Italian citizens and register our existence, because the right to be Italian is transmitted by blood, so everyone born abroad who is a descendant of an Italian is Italian.
Rodrigo Rebelo de Carvalho
February 1, 2026 at 12:02 am
Now let's do a quick calculation. Let's assume each lawsuit has 03 plaintiffs. We multiply that by €600, so each lawsuit costs €1.200. We multiply that by 10.660, giving us €12.792.000. What did they do with all that money? Isn't there anyone to ask them this question? In my opinion, the portal could do a story on this.
PS: I only mentioned the processing fee, without taking into account other taxes related to the citizenship process.