THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE 1947 PARIS PEACE TREATY ON CITIZENSHIP ITALIAN LAW

Abstract

Following the signing of the Paris Peace Treaty between Italy and the victorious powers in 1947, Italian law entered a long period of transition. After the abolition of a large part of the Fascist legal system, the question of citizenship remained anchored in the principles established by Law 555/1912. The study presented here attempts to reconstruct the elements of continuity and change in Italian citizenship law in this difficult transition. In particular, the research focuses on the issues related to the attribution, loss and re-acquisition of Italian citizenship and its practical consequences on individuals and families. The research was carried out on the basis of legislative documents, parliamentary debates found in the archives of the Chamber of Deputies in Rome and judgments handed down by various local courts, together with doctrinal debates dating mainly from the 1940s and 1950s. The analysis of this material leads to the conclusion that the Italian legal transition, in which the right to citizenship must be included, was very slow and incapable of dealing with issues that were partly new at the time and that the historical research of juridical nature has largely ignored.