On August 10, 2026, Italy’s Ministero dell’Interno issued Circolare prot. n. 65050/2026, formally instructing comuni, and consular authorities to apply the Sezioni Unite’s Minor Issue ruling n. 24045/2026. This is the administrative follow-through that had been missing since the Cassazione’s decision in July — and it does more than just acknowledge the new case law: it opens a concrete path for people whose applications were already rejected.

Why this circular (circolare) of the Ministry of the Interior matters

Sezioni Unite rulings are not formally binding on other courts under Italian law, but departing from them without strong justification is rare and risky — it exposes a decision to a high likelihood of being overturned on appeal. That persuasive weight, however, doesn’t automatically change how a consulate or comune processes an application — that requires the Ministry to issue updated internal guidance. Until this circular was published, offices had no formal instruction to depart from the previous, stricter approach, and some continued applying the old rule to pending files.

This circular closes that gap. It expressly supersedes the earlier Circolare prot. n. 43347/2024 — the one that had instructed offices to follow the now-overturned interpretation from Ordinanza Corte di Cassazione n. 17161/2023 — and directs mayors and civil registry officials to bring their administrative practice in line with the Sezioni Unite

What does the circolare of the Ministry on the minor issue confirm

The circular restates, almost verbatim, the binding principles from ruling of the Corte di Cassazione Sezioni Unite n. 24045/2026:

• A minor born abroad to an Italian citizen, in a country where citizenship is acquired iure soli, is a dual citizen by right from birth (bipolide di diritto dalla nascita) and keeps Italian citizenship even if the Italian parent later naturalizes or otherwise loses Italian citizenship — subject only to a contrary treaty provision, or the individual’s own voluntary renunciation as an adult.
• Article 12 of Law 555/1912 continues to apply, but only to a minor who held exclusively Italian citizenship and who, sharing residence with the naturalizing parent, actually acquires the foreign citizenship as a derivative consequence.
• Full parity between mothers and fathers applies both to the transmission of citizenship at birth and to the consequences of a parent’s loss of citizenship.

The one date range worth checking carefully

The circular specifies that this favorable treatment applies to naturalizations of the cohabiting parent that occurred between July 1, 1912 and August 15, 1992 — the period during which Law 555/1912 was in force. If the parent’s naturalization occurred before June 30, 1912, a different regime applies (the 1865 civil code), governed by separate principles the Cassazione addressed in a prior ruling, Ordinanza n. 454/2024. If your family’s naturalization date falls right around either boundary, this is worth confirming precisely before assuming which rule governs your case.

If your case was already rejected: you don’t need to appeal the Consular rejection in court

This is the most immediately useful part of the circular for many families. If your citizenship application was previously denied specifically because of the old interpretation — that is, the denial was based exclusively on the reasoning in Ordinanza n. 17161/2023, as instructed by the superseded 2024 circular — you do not need to file a brand-new application. You can instead request a mero riesame: a review of your original application.

A few practical details matter here:

• The review applies the law as it stood when you first applied. If your original application was submitted before March 27, 2025 (or based on an appointment communicated to you by that date), the new two-generation limits under Article 3-bis of the 2025 reform do not apply to the reviewed decision — you keep the benefit of the earlier, more favorable framework.
• The same office that issued your original rejection handles the review request — even if you’ve since moved, whether within Italy or abroad.
• This route is specifically for prior rejections based solely on the now-superseded interpretation. If your case was rejected for other reasons (incomplete documentation, a different legal issue entirely, a final court judgment), this circular’s review mechanism doesn’t apply in the same way, and a different analysis is needed.

Not sure if your case fits this pattern? See our breakdown of nine common scenarios

What this means in practice

For a case that was refused purely on Minor Issue grounds, this circular turns what might otherwise have required a court filing into a more direct administrative path — a request for review addressed to the original deciding authority, rather than a new judicial proceeding. That’s a meaningful practical shift: faster, and without the cost and time of litigation, for the specific population of cases this covers.

It’s still worth having your original denial and your family’s documentation reviewed carefully before requesting reconsideration, since the boundary conditions in this circular — the naturalization date range, and the precise basis for the original rejection — determine whether this streamlined path is actually available to you.

You can download the Circolare of the Ministero dell’Interno here