With the ever-looming enforcement of Brexit in March 2019 and the Decreto Sicurezza* (D.L. n. 113/2018) which came into force on 5th October 2018, there has been an influx of British citizens making applications for Italian citizenship (on the grounds of residency, marriage or ius sanguinis) with the aim to protect their rights as European citizens.
Recently we have received enquiries from British clients in relation to what form of birth certificates would be considered acceptable in the citizenship application. The online application itself does allow you to state that your parents’ names are not on your birth certificate, i.e. as on a short form birth certificate and your citizenship application can be processed successfully, online. However we believe short form birth certificates could lead to the rejection of an application before or after the applicant’s interview at the Prefettura when original documents are being considered. The Italian government prefers the certificate to be similar to an “estratto dell’atto di nascita”.
Where possible we would advise all British applicants to submit long-form birth certificates to avoid delays in their applications being considered and potentially their applications being considered invalid. For those applicants who only have short-form birth certificates, ordering a long-form birth certificate from the UK is quick and inexpensive (£23), please follow the link for further information:
https://www.gov.uk/order-copy-birth-death-marriage-certificate
An issue relating to parent’s names has also recently caused conflict between the Italian government and the Garante Privacy. When a child of Italian nationality (or foreign national resident in Italy) applies for the new electronic carta di identita, the application form requires them to state the name of “Parent 1” and “Parent 2”. The Italian government objected to this and proposed to re-introduce the traditional form of description of the parents ie mother and father, The Garante Privacy has refused to allow this, given the growing number of children of adopted parents or births registered abroad to same sex-couples, or single parent families.
*We will post further updates on Decreto Legge n. 113/2018, including guidelines and and Circulars fom the Ministero dell’Interno, in the next few months. On 28th November 2018 the Lega Nord and Cinque Stelle government won a majority in the Camera for the further implementation of this law. This included a decision that Italy should not take part in an intergovernmental conference in Marrakech next month to adopt the United Nations Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration.
