The Filing Date Is the Law: Italy, Portugal and the Client Already in Line

Italy and Portugal both tightened the road to citizenship between March 2025 and May 2026, and both drew the same kind of line. Applications already filed carried on under the old rules, while clients who had been eligible for years but had not filed found that eligibility counted for nothing. Italy’s cut-off fell at 23:59 Rome time on 27 March 2025, the day before its cabinet adopted the decree. Portugal’s fell on 19 May 2026, the day its new nationality law entered into force.

The courts in both countries then confirmed the split. The law protected the person who had filed, not the person who qualified. For a practice, that makes the filing date the most valuable thing it controls, and it changes what a firm owes every client who is waiting, whether already in line or only planning to join it.

Italy drew the line before anyone could read it

Decree-Law 36/2025 was adopted by the Council of Ministers on 28 March 2025, published in the Gazzetta Ufficiale the same day, and in force on 29 March (Gazzetta Ufficiale, Serie Generale n. 73). It inserted article 3-bis into Italy’s citizenship law, Law 91/1992. A person born abroad, “even before” the article took effect, who holds another citizenship “is considered never to have acquired Italian citizenship”, unless an exception applies.

The first two exceptions are pure dates. The old rules still govern a recognition application lodged with the consulate or the mayor, “with the necessary documentation”, no later than 23:59 Rome time on 27 March 2025, and a court claim filed by the same minute. The decree’s preamble gives the reason for the timing: to prevent “an exceptional and uncontrolled influx” of applications that would stop consulates, town halls and courts from working in an orderly way. A cut-off set the day before adoption cannot be raced. Nobody could file after reading the text.

Then the exceptions moved. Law 74/2025, signed on 23 May and in force the next day, converted the decree with amendments (Gazzetta Ufficiale, Serie Generale n. 118). It protected applicants who filed on an appointment date that the consulate or town hall had communicated by the same 27 March deadline. It rewrote the family tests: a parent or grandparent who holds, or held at death, only Italian citizenship, or a parent who lived in Italy for two continuous years after becoming a citizen and before the child was born. The decree’s tests built on a parent or grandparent born in Italy were deleted. Any eligibility advice given in April 2025 rested on tests that were rewritten eight weeks after the decree.

The courts protected the filed, not the eligible

Italy’s Constitutional Court heard a challenge referred by the Tribunal of Turin and decided it on 11 March 2026. Judgment 63/2026, filed on 30 April 2026, found the questions unfounded in part and inadmissible in part (Corte costituzionale, Sentenza n. 63/2026). The Court’s official headnote explains why people who had not yet applied lost. Their reliance was “weakened”, in part because of “the non-equivalence, from the standpoint of reliance, between those who took action and those who remained inactive” in front of a status that needs a prior assessment before any right attached to it can be used.

That is not the last word. On 23 July 2026 the same Court filed Order 147/2026, on cases from the tribunals of Mantua and Campobasso, and asked the Court of Justice of the European Union whether articles 9 TEU and 20 TFEU, the treaty provisions on EU citizenship, preclude article 3-bis. It restated its own view from Judgment 63 while making the referral (Corte costituzionale, press release of 23 July 2026). Until Luxembourg answers, every statement about an Italian descent claim needs a date on it.

Portugal’s Constitutional Court reached the same principle from the other side. Fifty deputies asked for preventive review of the parliament’s decree, which had been sent to the President on 11 November 2025 (Tribunal Constitucional, Acórdão n.º 1133/2025). JURIST reported that the request came from the Socialist Party. On 15 December 2025 the Court found four norms unconstitutional. One was the transitional clause, article 7(3) and (4) of the decree, which would have required pending applications to meet the old requirements as of the day they were filed, and labelled that rule “interpretive” so it reached backwards. The Court held that this broke the protection of trust in article 2 of the Constitution, and gave the reason in one line: the decision to obtain citizenship is “a structuring decision in the life of any person.”

The same ruling set a limit. The Court acknowledged that a stronger transitional regime might accommodate more of life’s situations, and then declined to find the law unconstitutional for protecting only procedures already pending. The repeal of the old counting rule survived review as well. A resident with five years of lawful residence who had not filed received nothing from the Court.

Portugal gave warning, and the window closed on a date

Organic Law 1/2026 was approved by parliament on 1 April 2026, promulgated on 3 May, published on 18 May and in force the next day (Diário da República, Lei Orgânica n.º 1/2026). Naturalisation now requires seven years of lawful residence for EU citizens and nationals of Portuguese-speaking countries, and ten years for nationals of other countries. Stateless people have a separate route after four years. The previous text required five, a figure the Constitutional Court restated in its December ruling. Separate periods of residence can be added together only if they fall within a maximum span of 6, 9 or 12 years: 6 for stateless people, 9 for EU and Portuguese-speaking nationals, 12 for everyone else.

The counting rule changed too. Since 1 April 2024, article 15(4) had let an applicant count the time spent waiting for a temporary residence permit, provided the permit was granted. The Court’s ruling traces that rule to the backlog of residence applications at SEF and later AIMA, the migration agencies (Acórdão n.º 1133/2025, on Organic Law 1/2024). The 2026 law repeals it. For a client who spent a long time in that queue, the repeal can matter more than the headline number.

Article 7(2) is the sentence that decides who keeps what: administrative procedures pending on the date the law enters into force stay under the previous version of the nationality law. Unlike Italy, Portugal gave months of public notice. The decree reached the President on 11 November 2025 and the law took effect on 19 May 2026. Counting only from that final text, a client eligible under the five-year rule had about six months to turn eligibility into a filed application. Those who did are still on the old rules.

Two Italian windows stay open, to 2027 and 2029

A law that closes one window often opens smaller ones, each with its own clock, and the clocks move too. Law 74/2025 gave children who were minors when it took effect, and whose parents were recognized as citizens under the protected-filing exceptions, a declaration route to citizenship open until 23:59 Rome time on 31 May 2026. Law 26/2026, in force on 1 March 2026, converted Decree-Law 200/2025 and moved that deadline to 31 May 2029. A firm that told families in 2025 that the window would close in May 2026 owes them a dated correction now, before a client raises it.

A second window is open too. Former citizens who were born in Italy, or lived there for two continuous years, and who lost citizenship under article 8, numbers 1 and 2, or article 12 of the 1912 citizenship law can reacquire it by a declaration made between 1 July 2025 and 31 December 2027, with a consular fee of 250 euros for the declaration (Law 74/2025). Fifteen months remain. A client who hears about it in December 2027 will ask why nobody mentioned it in 2026.

This dossier reads the public texts. It is not legal advice, and whether a given client fits any of these rules is a question for counsel on that file.

What a practice owes the client already in line

Eligibility is a moving target. A filed application is not. Both reforms show where a practice earns its fee when the law moves: in the gap between a client who qualifies and a client who has filed.

Closing that gap takes four things. The first is information with a date on it. An alert that says Portugal is changing its nationality law helps nobody. An alert that says who is affected, from which date, and what they should do before it, is something a client can act on the same week. The second is readiness. Italy’s line fell before the text was public, so the only safe clients were the ones whose files were already complete. A practice that holds a ready-to-file file per client, with documents current, translated and legalised, can meet a deadline in days rather than months.

The third is a written statement to each pending client of the rules that govern the application, with the legal basis and the filing date. In Portugal that means article 7(2) and the submission receipt. In Italy it means the exception the application sits under. The fourth is discipline in language. “You qualify” is a sentence with no date. “You qualified under the rules in force on 18 May 2026, and your application was filed on that basis” survives the next reform.