The Italian government has scheduled a referendum on June 8-9 to decide whether to cut in half the waiting period for acquiring Italian citizenship. This initiative, driven by opposition parties and NGOs, was triggered after collecting over 500,000 signatures—the legal threshold required to bring the issue to a vote.
Currently, foreigners must reside in Italy for at least ten years before applying for naturalization, while children born to foreign parents can only request citizenship upon reaching adulthood. The proposed reform seeks to reduce the residency requirement to five years and grant automatic citizenship to minors born to foreign parents in Italy.
Although Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government, led by the far-right Fratelli d’Italia party, opposes the reform, it was legally obligated to organize the referendum. If the “yes” vote prevails, around 2.5 million foreigners could gain Italian citizenship.
