Maternal Line
As we have seen with regard to the paternal line, the period of the emigration of Italians in the past centuries was a seriously discriminatory environment towards women, which resulted from the legal notions of those eras.
This was very slowly remedied with a series of regulatory and juridical interventions, first and foremost the introduction of the 1948 Republican Constitution. It contains two fundamental articles: Article 3 “All citizens have equal social dignity and are equal before the law” and Article 29 “Marriage is established on the moral and legal equality of spouses”.
Therefore, the discriminatory principles stipulated in the old Italian citizenship law No. 555 of 1912 – which prevented the mother’s transmission of Italian citizenship – had to be removed from the system because they no longer conformed to the new Constitution of 1948.
This happened as a result of two very important rulings by the Constitutional Court: no. 87 of 16 April 1975 and no. 30 of 9 February 1983.
Subsequently, the United Sections of the Court of Appeal, with its historic sentence no. 4466/2009, acknowledged these principles by allowing the recognition of Italian citizenship in favour of all children born abroad of Italian mothers who had not obtained citizenship due to the discriminatory law of 1912. As a result of this ruling, the children of Italian women born before 1 January 1948, namely under Law No. 555 of 1912, reacquire Italian citizenship from that date.
In conclusion, we can state that, with the above rulings, the descendants of Italian citizens are now by definition Italian even if the female ascendant married a foreign citizen and had children before 1948 (i.e. before the Constitution came into force).
E.g. Maria (born in Brazil in 1920 from an Italian father) from her union with Enrique (Brazilian) had Clara in 1944 and Pedro in 1946. Both the latter and their descendants are also Italian citizens due to the above-mentioned rulings that annulled the discriminatory effects of the 1912 Italian nationality law.
Therefore, the maternal line is defined as the line of descent iure sanguinis in which there is the presence of a woman born in Italy who then emigrated abroad, or born abroad of an Italian father, who had offspring before 1 January 1948.
Why is it relevant to understand whether one’s offspring falls within the above-described maternal line?
Because in the case of transmission of Italian citizenship prior to 1948, i.e. in the case of a maternal line, it is not possible to begin the administrative procedure at the Consulate since the Italian Consulate does not accept the process of such procedures or at the Italian Comune of residence.
In cases of maternal lineage, the recognition of Italian citizenship must therefore take place exclusively through the courts.