Trieste Recognizes Italian Citizenship of Two Sisters from Rio Grande do Sul via Italian Great-grandfather

The Tribunale di Trieste recognized Italian citizenship iure sanguinis for two sisters born in Rio Grande do Sul, descendants of an ancestor born in Italy in 1857. The decision is sentenza n. 2312/2026, published on July 15, 2026, according to the text disclosed by the legal website Diritto Pratico.

What the Trieste Court Decided

The sentence was handed down by the section of the Tribunale di Trieste specialized in immigration and international protection, which also judges actions for recognition of Italian citizenship by descent. The plaintiffs in the action are two Brazilian sisters seeking judicial recognition of citizenship based on a great-grandfather born in Italy on March 17, 1857.

According to the text of the decision published by Diritto Pratico, the Italian Interior Ministry, defendant in this type of proceeding, did not appear in court — a situation known as default. The absence of defense by the agency, however, did not prevent the judge from analyzing the merits of the claim and verifying the documentation presented by the plaintiffs, concluding that the action should be granted.

The case was filed in 2024 and took about 30 months until the publication of the sentence in 2026 — an interval that serves as a reference for those evaluating today the Italian citizenship judicial action as an alternative to the administrative route.

Why the Case Ended Up in Trieste

One of the technical points of the sentence concerns the court's own jurisdiction to judge the case. Since June 22, 2022, Law 206/2021 changed the rule that defines where citizenship actions should be filed when the author resides abroad: instead of following the criterion of the applicant's place of residence in Italy (old rule, which concentrated proceedings in Rome), the criterion of the Italian ancestor's comune of birth now applies.

Since the great-grandfather of the plaintiffs was born in a municipality under the jurisdiction of the Corte d'Appello di Trieste, the case was correctly distributed to that court. The sentence reinforces, in practice, an alert that already circulates among lawyers working with Italian citizenship: before filing any action, it is necessary to precisely identify the comune of birth of the Italian ancestor, as this data — not the applicant's address — defines the competent forum in Italy.

Administrative Queue Does Not Prevent Going to Court

Another relevant point of the decision addresses the relationship between the administrative route (requests made in consulates or Italian municipalities) and the judicial route. The judge in Trieste reaffirmed an understanding already consolidated in other Italian courts: it is not necessary to wait for a response from the consulate, nor to formally prove that the 730-day deadline provided by DPR 362/1994 (regulation implementing Law 91/1992) has already expired, for the interested party to resort directly to the Judiciary.

The chronic delay of Italian offices in analyzing citizenship requests — a phenomenon widely reported and recognized by the courts themselves — is cited in the reasoning as legitimate justification for direct access to the Judiciary. This is a relevant path for Brazilian families who filed administrative requests years ago and continue without any response.

Constitutional Court Ruling Did Not Change the Rules

The Trieste sentence also references decision n. 142/2025 of the Italian Corte Costituzionale, which ruled inadmissible the constitutional questions raised against the set of rules that govern the transmission of citizenship by descent — the Civil Code of 1865, Law 555/1912, and Law 91/1992.

In practice, this means that, as of the date of the Trieste sentence, the legal framework on citizenship iure sanguinis remained unchanged by a Constitutional Court decision: there was no change in the rules of citizenship transmission by this body.

It is important not to confuse this ruling with the Decreto Tajani and Law 74/2025, which restricted the possibility of citizenship recognition via the administrative route (consulates and municipalities) for great-grandchildren and later generations. The Trieste sentence does not directly address these more recent rules, but confirms that, for ongoing judicial proceedings, the courts continued analyzing claims based on the legal framework then in force.

What This Means in Practice for Brazilian Families

The case judged in Trieste shows that judicial actions based on ancestors who emigrated from Italy still in the nineteenth century continue to be accepted and analyzed with technical rigor by Italian courts, provided the documentation presented is consistent.

Among the elements that typically support this type of action are:

• The birth certificate of the Italian ancestor, issued by the comune of origin;
• Proof that the ancestor never naturalized in another country before the birth of the descendant in the line of transmission, or that naturalization occurred afterward;
• The absence of any formal act of renunciation of Italian citizenship along the succession line;
• The complete chain of birth, marriage, and, when necessary, death certificates, connecting the applicant to the Italian ancestor.

The duration of approximately 30 months between the filing in 2024 and the publication of the sentence in 2026 offers a realistic time frame for those evaluating the judicial route as an alternative to the administrative queue in Brazilian consulates or Italian municipalities.

Cases such as the one judged by the Tribunale di Trieste continue to be closely monitored by those researching Italian news related to citizenship and by Brazilians planning to live or study in the country, a topic also covered in Raízes Italianas's life in Italy coverage.

The decision reinforces that, despite recent changes brought by Decreto Tajani to the administrative route, the Italian Judiciary continues to be a concrete path for citizenship recognition for descendants of Italians, especially for those with robust documentation and facing delays in traditional channels.

Do you want to know if you have the right to Italian citizenship? Talk to a specialized advisory service.