Italy

For a century Italian citizenship passed down the generations without limit, and for the four countries in this corpus with the largest Italian emigration that was the single most used route to a European passport. Article 3-bis ended it. A person born abroad who holds another citizenship is now considered never to have acquired Italian citizenship at all - the article says so in terms, and it says it of people born before it came into force. Four conditions save a claim: recognition already granted on an application filed with a consulate or a mayor by 23:59 Rome time on 27 March 2025, or on an appointment communicated by that moment; a claim already established in court on an action filed by the same deadline; a parent or grandparent who holds, or held at death, Italian citizenship and no other; or a parent who lived in Italy for two continuous years after acquiring citizenship and before the child was born. Outside those, the residence route remains: two years of legal residence in Italy for someone with an Italian parent or grandparent by birth.

Italian naturalisation is granted by presidential decree and the waiting period depends on who you are. Ten years of legal residence for a foreigner with no other connection. Four for a citizen of a European Union member state. Five for a stateless person, and five for someone adopted as an adult by an Italian or who has served the State for five years. Three for someone born in Italy. Two for someone whose parent or grandparent was Italian by birth. Marriage is a separate article with its own clock: two years of legal residence in Italy after the wedding, or three years from the wedding if the couple lives abroad, each halved where there are children.

Italy rewrote this test and the new wording is wider than the old one. A person is resident for income tax if, for the greater part of the tax period and counting fractions of a day, they have their civil-law residence or their domicile in Italy, or are simply present there. Domicile is then defined for this purpose alone: the place where a person's personal and family relations mainly develop - not their business. Registration in the resident population register raises a presumption of residence, rebuttable. And Italian citizens who deregister and move to a territory not on the Finance Ministry's list are presumed resident unless they prove otherwise.

Once a foreign driver takes up registered residence in Italy, article 136 of the Highway Code lets them convert a valid non-EU licence into an Italian one without sitting the driving examination - but only where a specific bilateral understanding allows it, and on reciprocity. The converted licence is withdrawn and sent back to the issuing authority with the reasons. Where there is no understanding, the article is explicit the other way: no conversion is made of an EU licence that itself derives from a licence issued by a state Italy has no bilateral understanding with.

Italy runs employment immigration through a quota and a one-stop desk. An employer who wants to hire a foreigner living abroad must first check with the competent employment centre that no worker already in the country is available, document it, and then send the single immigration desk of the province a named request for a work clearance together with evidence of where the worker will live. The desk sits in the prefecture and runs the whole procedure. Above that sits the decreto flussi: outside the quota, an ordinary employed application cannot be made at all.

Italy's investor route is written as an exception to the quota: entry and stay beyond three months are allowed outside the decreto flussi for a foreigner who intends to make one of the listed investments in their own name or for a company they legally represent. The Act names two million euro in Italian government securities, to be held for at least two years, and a philanthropic donation of at least one million to a project of public interest in culture, education, immigration management, scientific research or the recovery of cultural and landscape assets. The applicant must show they are the owner and beneficial owner of the money, that it is available and transferable to Italy, and must undertake in writing to use it for the stated purpose.

Italy lets a lawfully resident foreigner bring a spouse who is not legally separated and is at least eighteen, minor children including the spouse's and those born outside marriage, adult children who are dependent and cannot support themselves because of a total disability, and dependent parents - the last only where they have no other children in the country of origin, or where they are over sixty-five and their other children cannot support them for documented serious health reasons. Where a foreign authority cannot certify a relationship, or where there are founded doubts about the documents, Italian consulates issue the certification themselves.

Italy splits health care in two and writes both halves into the immigration Act. Foreigners lawfully staying who work, are self-employed or are registered as seeking work must enrol in the National Health Service, and so must those holding or renewing a permit for work, family, asylum, subsidiary protection, special cases, special protection, medical treatment, an asylum claim, pending adoption, fostering or the acquisition of citizenship - and unaccompanied foreign minors, even before a permit is issued. Enrolment carries equal treatment with Italian citizens. For foreigners present without lawful status, article 35 guarantees urgent or in any case essential outpatient and hospital care, continuing care included, at public and accredited facilities, and extends preventive medicine programmes to them.

The immigration Act's education article is written as a guarantee rather than as a procedure: equal treatment between a foreigner and an Italian citizen in access to technical and higher education courses and to the measures that support the right to study, within the limits the article itself sets. Higher education institutions are told to promote access by foreigners within their autonomy and their budgets. What a student visa and permit require is not in this article.

Whether a short visit to Italy needs a visa is not in any Italian instrument. Regulation (EU) 2018/1806 carries two annexes: nationals of the countries in Annex I need a visa to cross the external border, and nationals of the countries in Annex II are exempt for stays of no more than 90 days in any 180-day period. The Regulation is directly applicable, so the answer is the same here as in every other Schengen state.

Personal property imported by someone transferring their normal residence from a third country to the customs territory enters free of import duties. The conditions do the work: the goods must have been owned - and, if durable, used - at the old residence for at least six months; the person must have lived outside the customs territory for a continuous twelve months; and the goods must be entered for free circulation within twelve months of the move. Alcohol, tobacco, commercial vehicles and trade equipment other than portable instruments get no relief at all.

The right to open a basic payment account in Italy is a Union right before it is an Italian one. Article 16 of the Payment Accounts Directive obliges member states to ensure that consumers legally resident in the Union have the right to open and use one, and it names in the same sentence consumers with no fixed address, asylum seekers, and consumers who hold no residence permit but whose expulsion is impossible for legal or factual reasons. A directive binds the State rather than the bank, so what a customer enforces is the Italian transposition, which this record does not reach.

The immigration Act creates permits by activity: employed work, self-employment, study, research, family, investment. It creates none for a person living on their own money. The route Italy actually uses for that reader - residenza elettiva, elective residence - comes from the visa decree rather than from the Act, and that decree is not read here. What the Act does say is that entry and stay beyond three months are allowed outside the quota for the investor cases of article 26-bis, which is the only place in the statute where money alone opens a door.

Nothing in the immigration Act is addressed to retired people. The Act's permits are built around an activity, and retirement is not one. A pensioner uses the same elective residence route as anyone living on their own money, and that route is in the visa decree rather than in the statute.

Italy belongs to the European Union's free movement regime, which reaches nationals of member states, of the European Economic Area and of Switzerland and nobody in this corpus. There is no Ibero-American or Mediterranean equivalent: nothing lets an Argentine or a Brazilian enter and stay in Italy on nationality the way a Mercosur national can inside South America. What Italy has instead is descent, and that is a question of citizenship rather than of residence - the ancestry record carries it, including the 2025 article that closed it.