The Tribunal of Bologna has addressed the consular attempts argument in more than one ruling, reaching the same conclusion each time. What makes the decisions analyzed here particularly significant is not just their outcome, but the explicitness of the reasoning — Bologna has not simply rejected claims on generational grounds, but has directly confronted the Prenot@mi question and ruled it out.
Bologna Court: Prenot@mi not raised, still addressed
On June 1, 2026, the Tribunal of Bologna issued a ruling that deserves attention not only for its outcome — a rejection — but for something the judge said that goes further than most courts have been willing to state explicitly.
The case involved a Brazilian family claiming Italian citizenship jure sanguinis through descent from an ancestor born in Zocca, in the province of Modena, in 1901. The ancestor had emigrated to Brazil without ever naturalizing or renouncing Italian citizenship. The petition was filed on November 5, 2025 — well after the March 28, 2025 reform deadline. The petitioners were third and fourth-degree descendants of the Italian ancestor, placing them beyond the two-generation limit introduced by Art. 3-bis of Law 91/1992.
The outcome was straightforward on those facts: no formal application had been submitted before the March 27, 2025 deadline, no confirmed consular appointment had been communicated, and the generational limit was clearly exceeded. The petition was rejected. Litigation costs were compensated between the parties, in light of the novelty of the legal questions involved and the recent Constitutional Court ruling.
It is worth noting that the Tribunal of Bologna has not spoken with a single voice on these questions. A favorable ruling from the same court — reportedly issued on April 17, 2026 — had circulated on social media, suggesting that post-reform recognition might be possible in certain circumstances. I have not been able to verify that ruling directly from court documents, and I have therefore not analyzed it here. What I can say is that the June 1 ruling moves deliberately in the opposite direction — and does so with unusual explicitness on the Prenot@mi question.
What makes this decision worth examining separately is a part in the judge’s reasoning that addresses the Prenot@mi question head-on — even though, in this specific case, no Prenot@mi documentation had been produced or even mentioned by the petitioners.
The judge stated that attempts to access the Prenot@mi portal that were unsuccessful due to unavailability of slots would not be relevant — and added that in any case such attempts had not been alleged or documented in these proceedings. The significance of this lies in the structure of the reasoning: the judge did not simply note the absence of evidence and move on. The judge went out of the way to say that such evidence, even if it had been present, would not have changed the outcome.
The reasoning is rooted in a strict reading of Art. 3-bis. The exceptions to the new regime require either a judicial petition, a formal administrative application with complete documentation, or a confirmed consular appointment. These are exhaustive categories. In the Bologna court’s view, preparatory activities — including attempts to book a consular appointment — fall outside all of them. Any interpretation that would extend the exceptions to cover such activities would be impermissibly broad.
This position is directly at odds with the approach taken by the Naples and Palermo courts in the favorable rulings analyzed in my previous article. Those courts treated documented, sustained Prenot@mi attempts as evidence of an intent to initiate the administrative procedure before the deadline — and found this sufficient to satisfy Art. 3-bis letter (a). The Bologna judge rejected that interpretive path entirely, before it was even presented.
For a detailed analysis of the Naples and Palermo rulings, see: [Italian Citizenship by Descent After Law 74/2025: How Courts Are Deciding]
A second Bologna ruling: Prenot@mi produced, Prenot@mi rejected
A further Bologna ruling — RG 5272/2025, Judge Patrizia Bellettati, — reaches the same conclusion but on stronger evidentiary ground. In this case, unlike the June ruling, the petitioner had actually produced Prenot@mi documentation. The judge examined it and rejected it explicitly.
The petitioner was a Brazilian citizen claiming descent from an ancestor born in Longiano, in the province of Forlì, in 1869 — a great-great-great-grandparent, well beyond the second-degree limit. The petition was filed on April 16, 2025, after the reform deadline.
On the Prenot@mi question, the judge was direct: attempts to book a consular appointment, and requests for information about how to submit an application, do not amount to a formal application under any of the exceptions in Art. 3-bis. Only a formal judicial petition, a complete administrative application with documentation, or a confirmed consular appointment satisfies the statutory requirement. The judge added the same point made by the later ruling: the petitioner could have filed directly before the court without any prior consular step, so consular unavailability cannot serve as a justification.
“Attempts to book an appointment for the formalization of an administrative application cannot have any bearing on the application of the previous rules, given that the legislature has determined that only a judicial petition (Art. 3-bis letter b), or an application accompanied by the necessary documentation submitted to the competent consular office or mayor (Art. 3-bis letter a), or an application accompanied by the necessary documentation submitted to the competent consular office or mayor on the day indicated by an appointment communicated to the applicant by the competent office (Art. 3-bis letter a-bis), preserves the application of the pre-reform rules. Only the formalization of an application — to which the hypothesis of an already confirmed appointment has been assimilated — allows the intention to apply for Italian citizenship to be identified. Attempts to access the Prenot@mi portal or requests for information about how to submit an application addressed to the competent administrative authorities are therefore not assimilable to such a formalization”.
Read together, the two Bologna rulings establish a consistent position: Prenot@mi documentation — whether produced or not — does not change the outcome. Bologna has addressed this argument directly and rejected it twice, in two separate cases, before two different judges.
Bologna, third ruling: generation makes the difference
A third Bologna ruling — RG 11641/2025, Honorary Judge Chiara Breschi, May 26, 2026 — adds a further dimension to the picture. Unlike the previous two, this case produced a split outcome: one petitioner was granted citizenship, the others were rejected. The difference turned entirely on the degree of descent.
The case involved a Brazilian family claiming descent from an ancestor born in Carpaneto Piacentino (Piacenza) in 1905, who had emigrated to Brazil without ever naturalizing or renouncing Italian citizenship. The petition was filed on August 27, 2025 — after the reform deadline. Among the petitioners, one was a direct grandchild of the Italian ancestor — a second-degree descendant. The others were third-degree descendants.
The judge applied Art. 3-bis letter (c) to the second-degree petitioner and granted citizenship in full, finding that the ancestor had held exclusively Italian citizenship at the time of death, and that the petitioner had adequately discharged the burden of proof on the absence of disqualifying factors. On the burden of proof point, the judge made a significant interpretive choice: the obligation under Art. 1, paragraph 2 of DL 36/2025 to prove the absence of causes of loss or non-acquisition of citizenship applies to the ancestor only — not to each subsequent generation in the line of descent.
For the remaining petitioners — all third-degree descendants — the petition was rejected. No consular application had been submitted before the deadline, no confirmed appointment had been communicated, and the generational limit was exceeded. The judge also noted that the genealogical documentation produced was entirely dated after the entry into force of DL 36/2025, which made it impossible to argue even in the abstract that administrative paralysis had prevented the petitioners from formalizing their intent — particularly given that the judicial route had always been available.
The relevant passage of the ruling states: “The petitioners have not alleged, let alone demonstrated, that they had submitted an administrative application prior to this petition. Moreover, all the documentation produced to establish the line of descent postdates the entry into force of DL 36/25, which makes it impossible to argue even in the abstract that administrative delays could have prevented them from formalizing their intention — especially given the settled case law recognizing the right to file directly before the judiciary without any prior administrative application.”
My reading
As an Italian citizenship lawyer, the contrast between the different courts is evident — and the three Bologna rulings together make it more so. Across three separate cases, before three different judges, Bologna has applied the same framework consistently: the exceptions in Art. 3-bis are exhaustive, preparatory acts do not qualify, and the judicial route was always available as an alternative. In the April ruling, Prenot@mi documentation was produced and explicitly rejected. In the May ruling, the court went further — noting that documentation postdating the reform made it impossible to argue even in the abstract that consular unavailability had been an obstacle. In the June ruling, the argument was closed before it was even raised.
The May ruling also introduces a point that goes beyond the Prenot@mi question: the burden of proof on the absence of disqualifying factors applies to the ancestor, not to each generation in the line of descent. This is a meaningful interpretive clarification that practitioners should note. The contrast with Naples and Palermo remains open.
For an overview of how the June 9 Constitutional Court hearing unfolded, see: Italy Constitutional Court June 2026 – Ius Sanguinis
