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Italy’s left pushes to speed up citizenship reform bill

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's party pushed on Thursday for the Senate to pick up its heels over a citizenship reform bill which would allow children born in the country to foreign parents to become citizens.

Published: 14 October 2016 13:16 CEST

Italy's left pushes to speed up citizenship reform bill

Protestors dressed as ghosts to show how they feel 'invisible'. Photo: Filippo Monteforte/AFP

The centre-left Democratic Party (PD) urged the upper house of parliament to get on with debating the draft law, which was given the green light by the lower house last year but has been sat on by the Senate since then.

“I believe that recognizing the rights of those born in Italy and schooled here to become citizens is a civic requirement that cannot be put off,” said Senate party leader Anna Finocchiaro.

At the moment, Italian-born children with foreign parents are not allowed to apply for citizenship until they are 18.

A year to the day after its adoption by the lower house, supporters of the bill organized a rally near the Senate, holding white sheets over their heads to resemble ghosts, to remind lawmakers of the difficulties faced by those raised in the country who feel Italian but are not.

PD senator Doris Lo Moro admitted process had been slowed by some 8,000 amendments tabled mainly by the anti-immigrant Northern League party.

Under the new bill, the children in question would be able to obtain citizenship if a parent requested it and had a residence permit.

The measure would also extend to children born abroad but resident in Italy for at least six years and schooled here for at least five.

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Italy's Liguria regional president arrested in corruption probe

Liguria President Giovanni Toti, a right-wing former MEP who was close to late prime minister Silvio Berlusconi but is no longer party aligned, was placed under house arrest, Genoa prosecutors said in a statement.

The 55-year-old is accused of having accepted 74,100 euros in funds for his election campaign between December 2021 and March 2023 from prominent local businessmen, Aldo Spinelli and his son Roberto Spinelli, in return for various favours.

These allegedly included seeking to privatise a public beach and speeding up the renewal for 30 years of the lease of a Genoa port terminal to a Spinelli family-controlled company, which was approved in December 2021.

A total of 10 people were targeted in the probe, also including Paolo Emilio Signorini, who stepped down last year as head of the Genoa Port Authority, one of the largest in Italy. He was being held in jail on Tuesday.

He is accused of having accepted from Aldo Spinelli benefits including cash, 22 stays in a luxury hotel in Monte Carlo – complete with casino chips, massages and beauty treatments – and luxury items including a 7,200-euro Cartier bracelet.

The ex-port boss, who went on to lead energy group Iren, was also promised a 300,000-euro-a-year job when his tenure expires, prosecutors said.

In return, Signorini was said to have granted Aldo Spinelli favours including also working to speed up the renewal of the family’s port concession.

The Spinellis are themselves accused of corruption, with Aldo – an ex-president of the Genoa and Livorno football clubs – placed under house arrest and his son Roberto temporarily banned from conducting business dealings.

In a separate strand of the investigation, Toti’s chief of staff, Matteo Cozzani, was placed under house arrest accused of “electoral corruption” which facilitated the activities of Sicily’s Cosa Nostra Mafia.

As regional coordinator during local elections in 2020, he was accused of promising jobs and public housing in return for the votes of at least 400 Sicilian residents of Genoa.

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