Italian citizenship by marriage. Save a lot of time by submitting your application with us!

1) How to submit an Italian citizenship application with Vademecum Italia, thus avoiding the slowness of Italian consulates

According to art. 5, Law February 5, 1992, n. 91, the spouse (a foreigner or stateless person) of an Italian citizen can acquire Italian citizenship through marriage, provided that after the marriage he/she legally resides in the territory of the Italian Republic for at least two years, or after three years from the date of marriage if he/she resides abroad.

The above terms (two years and three years) are reduced by half in the presence of children born or adopted by the spouses.

Several applicants confuse the time he/she needs to wait before submitting the application (1-2 or 1.5-3 years) with the deadline for concluding the process, which is established by law in 730 days (D.P.R. April 18, 1994, no. 362. art. 3). Therefore, it is important to keep in mind that the applicant must wait 1-2 or 1.5-3 years after the marriage (or from the naturalization of the spouse) before submitting the application. Then, starting from the day of the submission of the IM application, the Italian administration has 730 days to conclude the process (a term that is almost never respected by the Italian authority).

Starting from 2015, it is possible to apply for citizenship directly online. This means that with the assistance of an Italian professional you will not need to submit your application through your local Italian consulate. Bypassing your local consulate means that you save a lot of time, months or even years and, based on our customers’ experience, you also reduce the risks of mistakes.

Please consider that there must have been no dissolution, annulment, legal separation of the spouses, or divorce (please read our previous post Italian citizenship obtained by marriage: will you lose it if you divorce?). The Italian spouse must be registered in the AIRE, and the act of marriage must have already been transcribed in the Municipality of interest (Rome, Milan, Turin, etc.).

It is not easy to understand the entire process and all the documents you need to submit. A minor error could make you waste a lot of time or could result in the denial of your citizenship request.

Presidential Decree no. 362 of 18 April 1994 establishes a series of rules and time frames that the Public Administration is required to respect when managing administrative procedures regarding the granting of Italian citizenship.

So, do not waste a lot of time, and ask for assistance from an expert Italian lawyer. Just send an email to assistance@vademecumitalia.com and we will provide the assistance you need.

The applicant may decide to entrust us with the sole submission of the application or with the entire management of the citizenship application process, which includes the important phase that follows the submission of the application.

1) In the first case, we can assist the applicant with the following activities:

advice on the documents to be collected;
request of the estratto per riassunto dell’atto di matrimonio from your Italian Comune that you need in order to submit the application (should you not have it yet);
creation of a personal account on the website of the Ministry of the Interior in the name of the applicant, and online submission of the application.

After the registration, you will receive the credentials which will allow you to follow the progress of the application online. You will also be informed of the date when you will have to go to your local consulate in order to deliver the original documents.

2) In case the applicant wants to receive full assistance throughout the process, in addition to the above service, we will also send “reminders” to the Italian authority in order to speed up the process and try to reduce the considerably long time of 4-5-6 years it usually takes to receive the much-desired citizenship decree (after which the applicant can go to his/her local consulate and take the oath of citizenship within the following six months).

So, do not waste a lot of time, and ask for assistance from an expert Italian lawyer. Just send an email to assistance@vademecumitalia.com and we will provide the assistance you need.

2) How to speed up the process if you have already submitted your application a long time ago

As said above, unfortunately, the 730 days deadline is almost never respected by the Italian administration, if the case is not properly monitored, managed, and followed. Therefore it is important to take action if you do not want your application to be on standby for 4-5-6 years. So, if you already applied for citizenship but you have seen no progress in your application or this is going very slowly, please read our post Italian citizenship application. How to speed up the process, to know what you can do to speed up your application process.

n1 “Il coniuge, straniero o apolide, di cittadino italiano puo’ acquistare la cittadinanza italiana quando, dopo il matrimonio, risieda legalmente da almeno due anni nel territorio della Repubblica, oppure dopo tre anni dalla data del matrimonio se residente all’estero, qualora, al momento dell’adozione del decreto di cui all’articolo 7, comma 1, non sia intervenuto lo scioglimento, l’annullamento o la cessazione degli effetti civili del matrimonio e non sussista la separazione personale dei coniugi. 2. I termini di cui al comma 1 sono ridotti della meta’ in presenza di figli nati o adottati dai coniugi )).” (art. 5, Law February 5, 1992, n. 91).