Good news has just arrived for those who intend to apply for the recognition of Italian citizenship jure sanguinis and live in those countries, such as Argentina, Brazil or theUnited States of America, where the number of applications forwarded is very high and the processing times are really long.

In fact, the Court of Rome, in its ruling of 10 December 2020, addressed the issue of the unreasonable waiting times of some Consulates and upheld the appeal filed by some Brazilian citizens for the judicial recognition of their Italian citizenship by descent.

Italian jurisprudence thus offers an important alternative for all those who reside abroad, particularly in those countries where the competent Italian Consulates face serious time delays in finalising citizenship applications. For all these people, it will therefore be possible to resort to the courts as an alternative to obtain recognition of their Italian citizenship, initiating what is known indeed as judicial recognition, with an estimated time frame of about 1.5 years up to its conclusion.

The Consulates, pursuant to art. 3 of Presidential Decree no. 362 of 1994, have a maximum of two years to complete the procedure; the Court of Rome, confirming a previous jurisprudential orientation, considered that unreasonable response times (sometimes even more than 10 years) incurred by many Italian Consulates therefore as leading to an obvious denial of justice, recognising for this reason the possibility (and necessity) for the interested parties to appeal to the judicial authorities to obtain the recognition of their citizenship through the representation of a qualified Lawyer within the Italian legal system.