Italy will limit its citizenship law based on blood ties to two generations, the government said on Friday, in a change to the system that has long sought to maintain ties with its wide diaspora.
Previously, people proving blood ties of up to four generations -- meaning their great-great grandfather was born in Italy -- could apply to Italy for citizenship.
"The granting of citizenship is a serious thing and in past years there have been abuses," Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani told journalists following a council of ministers meeting.
The decree announced on Friday allows citizenship for people born outside of Italy only if either parent or either grandfather was Italian.
The goal, Tajani said, was to "boost the affective link between Italy and the citizen abroad".
"Many descendants of emigrants will still be able to obtain Italian citizenship, but precise limits will be set, above all to avoid abuse," Tajani said, citing the "commercialisation of Italian passports".
Italy has long been a country of emigration, rather than immigration, and has taken an approach to citizenship that helps maintain ties with its wide diaspora.
Nationality is based on blood ties, rather than one's birthplace.
The foreign affairs ministry cited a boom in the recognition of citizenship abroad in the past 10 years, increasing by 40 percent from 4.6 million people to 6.4 million people.
There are currently 60,000 pending proceedings to verify citizenship.
In a statement, the ministry cited Argentina -- a country with a long history of emigration from Italy -- whose citizenship recognitions went from 20,000 in 2023 to 30,000 the following year.
In Brazil, they rose from 14,000 in 2022 to 20,000 in 2024.
Before the change announced on Friday, there were between 60 and 80 million people of Italian descent in the world eligible for citizenship, it said.
Despite its generous long-standing citizenship policy towards people of Italian blood, Italy strictly controls the awarding of citizenship to children born in the country to foreign parents.
Those children must wait until their 18th birthday before applying for citizenship, in an arduous bureaucratic process that can take years.
That has left hundreds of thousands of minors who were born and raised in Italy in legal limbo, unable to call themselves Italian.
Far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni opposes granting citizenship to those without blood ties despite Italy's shrinking population, arguing instead for policies to boost the birthrate.