Italy will hold a referendum on June 8-9 to decide whether to halve the waiting period for foreigners applying for Italian nationality, the government announced on Thursday.
If approved, the reform would reduce the required residency period to five years, potentially granting citizenship to around 2.5 million foreign nationals.
The referendum was triggered after opposition parties and pro-migrant organizations, including Oxfam Italia, collected more than 500,000 signatures last September, meeting the legal threshold for a public vote.
Despite strong opposition from the ruling Brothers of Italy (FdI) party, led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, the government was obligated to set a date for the vote after a ruling from the Constitutional Court in January approved its admissibility.
Currently, foreigners must reside in Italy for at least 10 years before applying for citizenship through naturalization. Children born in Italy to foreign parents are also unable to obtain citizenship until they turn 18.
Proponents of the reform argue that the existing system is restrictive and out of step with other European countries such as Germany, the U.K., Spain, and Portugal, where the naturalization process typically takes five years. In France, naturalization is permitted after two to five years, depending on individual circumstances.
The proposal has sparked a heated debate within the Italian government. Prime Minister Meloni, who came to power in 2022 on an anti-migration platform, has consistently opposed changes to the nationality law, calling the 10-year requirement “an appropriate length of time for nationality.”
Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, leader of the co-governing League Party, shares this stance.
However, the issue has created tensions within the governing coalition. Antonio Tajani, leader of the center-right Forza Italia party and also a deputy prime minister, suggested an alternative proposal last year to grant Italian nationality to children who have completed a continuous 10-year education in the national school system, rather than waiting until they turn 18. However, this idea was never formalized into legislation.
Reviewing the proposal earlier this year, Italy’s top court noted that the change would only affect the required residency period for foreign nationals to apply. Other conditions for naturalization, including a minimum B1 level in Italian, continuous and legal residency in the country, and the absence of a criminal record, will still apply.
For the proposal to pass, voter turnout must exceed 50 percent +1 of the Italian electorate and be supported by a simple majority.
Proponents of the change had called for the vote to be held on the same day as administrative elections on May 25-26 to ensure greater turnout. However, the government had the power to choose to hold the vote on another day.
“We had requested that there be a combination with the first round of the administrative elections and the referendum on May 25-26. Obviously, the road is now,” noted Riccardo Magi, spokesperson for the Citizenship Referendum Committee.
He added the work starts now to rally students and those more likely to support the bill to register to vote. “We have just over 80 days to break the wall of silence. Students must know that they must register and must communicate 35 days before the date of the vote their desire to vote not in the place where they are resident but in the place where they are domiciled.”