A recent ruling from the Tribunal of Florence — Specialized Section on Immigration — has taken a different path from the Bologna courts on the question of consular attempts, developing one of the most analytically detailed arguments in favor of protection seen so far in post-reform case law.
The court’s reasoning starts from a practical observation that had been largely absent from other rulings: the consular backlog in South America — particularly in Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela — had created waiting lists measured in years, not months. This is not a contested fact. It is a structural condition that predated the reform and contributed directly to the flood of judicial petitions that followed.
From this premise, the Florence court draws a legal consequence that Bologna has consistently refused to draw: the failure to formalize an administrative application before March 27, 2025, when causally attributable to the objective impossibility of accessing the consular channels provided by the administration — an overloaded booking system, absence of responses to communications, suspension of services — cannot be held against the applicant as a precluding circumstance. To hold otherwise, the court reasons, would make the protection of a fundamental right dependent not on the diligence of the applicant, but on the operational capacity of the consular office. This outcome conflicts directly with the ratio of the provision and with the principle of reasonableness.
The court then engages directly with Ruling 63/2026. Although the Constitutional Court left this specific profile unresolved — having explicitly stated at paragraph 9.1 that it was not raising the question of those who initiated the procedure but did not receive an appointment — the Florence court reads the motivazione of Sentenza 63 as providing the coordinates to support the following conclusion: where an applicant can demonstrate having taken action before March 27, 2025, through unequivocal and documentable conduct directed at obtaining recognition of citizenship status, rendered ineffective by consular overload or malfunction, their position must be treated as equivalent to that of someone who received an appointment or submitted a formal application. The consequence is the application of the pre-reform rules under Art. 3-bis, paragraph 1, letters (a) or (a-bis).
On the facts, the court found that valid activation to obtain a consular appointment — for the purpose of proceeding administratively with the recognition of Italian citizenship status — had been established before March 27, 2025. The petition was therefore admitted under the pre-reform framework.
For a Palermo ruling that develops a related argument around consular waiting lists, see: Palermo Court, June 2026: A Consular Waiting List Is Not the Same as No Action
What makes this ruling significant
The Florence reasoning is the most developed judicial articulation of the protective argument available in verified case law. It does not simply accept Prenot@mi documentation and move on. It constructs a legal framework — rooted in the principle of reasonableness, the ratio of Art. 3-bis, and the motivazione of Sentenza 63/2026 — that explains why consular dysfunction cannot be treated as the applicant’s legal failure.
This reasoning is also the most direct response to the Bologna position. Where Bologna found the categories of Art. 3-bis exhaustive and resistant to any extension, Florence has argued that the principle of reasonableness itself forbids an interpretation that produces an outcome dependent on administrative capacity rather than applicant diligence.
The Florence reasoning aligns with the approach taken by the Naples courts, which also treated documented consular attempts as sufficient evidence of pre-deadline intent. For an analysis of the Naples rulings, see: Italian Citizenship by Descent After Law 74/2025: How Courts Are Deciding
