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What’s the difference between Italian residency and citizenship?

As a foreigner in Italy you enter a complicated world of bureaucracy, but one question we are asked a lot is the difference in status between residency and citizenship.

Published: 11 February 2021 09:26 CET
Updated: 22 November 2023 14:12 CET

What's the difference between Italian residency and citizenship?

What rights do Italian citizens have that residents don't? Photo: Miguel Medina/AFP

Broadly the difference is this: citizenship gives you a lot more rights but is consequently harder to secure.

Here’s a look at how the different categories work:

Non-resident visitor

This category covers everything from people having a long weekend in Rome to second home owners.

Depending on where you come from you are allowed to stay in Italy for a certain period (for most non-Europeans this limit is 90 days) without becoming a full-time resident of the country.

The upside of this is that there’s no paperwork, but you don’t have any legal status or right to stay in the country.

You also won’t have access to healthcare if you need it while you are here so will need to make sure you are covered via health insurance or – for EU citizens – the European Health Insurance Card.

Residency

This means that you are officially allowed to live in Italy. The requirements for being an official resident of the country vary according to the country that you come from and your circumstances.

Citizens of EU countries and those within the Schengen zone benefit from European freedom of movement, which means they are entitled to move to Italy to live and work. This freedom is not completely unlimited – there are conditions around criminal records and minimum income level – but is fairly generous.

EU nationals who plan to stay in Italy permanently must register with their local town hall within three months of moving here. It’s not an immigration procedure but an administrative one: even Italian citizens have to do it if they’ve been living abroad, though it’s easier for them since registering as a foreigner requires jumping through extra hoops.

You will need to show that you are in a position to support yourself without state welfare – whether it’s by having a job, relying on a family member or spouse in Italy, or showing you have enough savings to get by. You’ll also have to demonstrate that you have health coverage, either because you qualify for national health care or you have private insurance.

People who are not citizens of an EU or Schengen zone country – known as third country nationals – have even more hoops to jump through before they can become residents.

For most non-Europeans, moving to Italy involves first getting a visa in your current country, then applying for a residency permit, known as a permesso di soggiorno, once you arrive. The visa process can be both complicated and expensive, and varies depending on your reason for coming to Italy. Find out about different types of visa here, and read one American’s first-hand account of the process here.

Since January 1st 2021, UK nationals no longer have the rights of EU citizens and will have to apply for a visa to live in Italy. Find out more here.

Brits who were already resident in Italy before the Brexit cut-off on December 31st 2020 should apply for a residency card to show they qualify to keep their rights to live and work here. You can apply at your local police headquarters, without needing to re-register your residency. Find more information here.

DEALING WITH BREXIT:

Once you have your residency in place, you will have access to the Italian healthcare system and other services, and your right to stay or re-enter Italy from overseas is protected.

You will also be expected to pay tax in Italy, including on income earned abroad.

Third country residents can stay as long as their permesso di soggiorno is valid. You will have to renew your permesso every two years or less, demonstrating each time that you still meet the conditions set out in your visa – for instance, you’re still enrolled or school or university if you’re on a student visa, or you’re still employed if you have a work visa.

After five years you may be able to apply for a long-term or permanent residency permit without an expiry date, but you’ll need to meet certain conditions like having a minimum income and passing a language test.

If you commit certain types of crime you can be removed from the country, while other crimes will mean getting a new visa or permesso becomes more difficult.

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EU citizens have the right to vote in municipal and European elections (but not parliamentary ones), while non-Europeans have no voting rights.

Certain types of jobs are reserved for Italian citizens only, while others – especially within public administration – are reserved for EU citizens only. Non-citizens cannot run for parliament, but EU citizens can stand as candidates in local elections.

Citizenship

This is the ultimate guarantee of your rights in Italy and once you have become an Italian citizen you are, on paper at least, exactly the same as Italian people who were born and bred here.

You are entitled to stay here for the rest of your life, even if you commit a serious crime, and you can pass your citizenship on to your children. You can also leave the country for as long as you want and return to live without having to ask permission.

You’ll also be guaranteed free access to the Italian healthcare system for you and your dependents, even if you don’t have a job.

You are entitled to vote and – in good news for those with political ambitions – you can stand for any type of public office including parliament.

But the flip side of this is that citizenship is not easy to obtain.

Italy’s rules are more generous than many other countries’ when it comes to allowing people to claim citizenship via ancestry: you can apply even if you only have one Italian ancestor several generations back.

But you’ll need to provide official certificates of birth, marriage and death for every relative between you and them to prove the line of descent, and your claim is usually wiped out if anyone in the chain renounced Italian citizenship before passing it on to their children.

If you don’t have Italian ancestors then the most common ways to obtain citizenship are through marriage to a Italian person or through residency.

In either case you need to fulfil a number of criteria, including having lived in the country for 10 years if you’re a third country national or being married to your Italian spouse for three years (two if you live in Italy and one if you have Italian children), as well as a minimum level of the Italian language.

It’s not a quick process – the Italian state gives itself up to two to four years to process applications – and involves a lot of paperwork. If original documents are in English you have to have them officially translated, notarised and legalised, for a fee. There are also fees just to submit your application.

Find out more about applying for citizenship here.

If you satisfy all the requirements and once your paperwork is all processed you will finally have to swear allegiance to the Italian Republic in a special ceremony (and make sure you say it right).

Member comments

Anonymous - 22 March 2023 at 10:42 CET

I have citizenship, but not residency, and was told quite clearly I am not entitled to free healthcare. (Tessera Sanitaria)
I was told I would have to pay an amount of money first (for a year) to obtain it which matches the figure Italian residents pay through their taxes.

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What I learned from applying for Italian citizenship by marriage

Of the three main routes to obtaining Italian citizenship, marriage is by far the least commonly taken.

Only 12 percent of all applications approved in 2021, the last year for which data is available, came via marriage or civil union to an Italian national – equal to about 14,500 people.

The relatively small number able to take the marriage route are arguably lucky: it tends to be quicker and simpler than obtaining Italian citizenship by almost any other means.

While ancestry and naturalisation via residency together account for the vast majority of applications filed, these paths involve more complex paperwork, higher costs, or a much longer wait time to become eligible.

However, there were changes to the law in 2018 designed to make it tougher to obtain citizenship via marriage. Likely as a result, the number of applications dropped to its lowest point in a decade in 2018 and 2019.

Below I’ve shared some of what I’ve learned so far from my own experience of my recent application for citizenship through marriage. I hope this will save you some time and stress, and perhaps help to make obtaining your Italian passport that little bit easier.

(Note that this article focuses on applying for Italian citizenship via marriage from within Italy, as that was my experience. But you can also apply if you live abroad: we have a separate guide to doing so here.)

Start earlier than you think you need to

After getting married in 2018, I finally filed my application for Italian citizenship in 2023. But, legally, I could’ve done so a lot sooner.

At the moment, the law states that the spouse of an Italian national can submit an application for citizenship after two years of marriage if they are resident in Italy, or three years if they live outside of Italy.

If you have a child together, the waiting time is reduced by half.

I began putting my own application together in 2021, and it took me around two years before I had everything ready to submit. This probably isn’t typical, as the timing wasn’t great: the combined impact of the pandemic and being in the middle of a house purchase slowed things down.

You may be able to do it in a much shorter time, though it’s not something you can do all at once. In any case, the sooner you start, the better.

Start with the language test

You’ll need electronic copies of the following documents ready for your application:

Valid identity document
Valid Italian residency permit
Marriage certificate (‘estratto per riassunto del registro dei matrimoni’)
Birth certificate (with sworn translation into Italian)
Criminal record from your home country and any third countries of residence (with sworn translation into Italian)
Proof of language proficiency
Payment receipt for application fee and revenue stamp

I’d suggest starting with the language certificate, for several reasons: it takes the longest to obtain, it doesn’t expire, and many people say it’s the most daunting item on the list.

The B1 Italian language exam is usually one of the most daunting tasks for people applying for citizenship by marriage

The B1 Italian language exam is usually one of the most daunting tasks for people applying for citizenship by marriage. Photo by lilartsy on Unsplash

Most applicants (see here for the few exemptions) need to prove that they speak Italian to at least B1 level, which is equal to a lower intermediate level, or basic conversational Italian.

As speaking at least some Italian is essential to everyday life in Italy, many people who’ve been here for a few years can probably meet this requirement without much difficulty. Others may want to take a language course in preparation.

I found that all the language schools offering the B1 cittadinanza exam (a simplified version of the B1 Italian exam for the purposes of the application) in my area required you to pay for a block of six language lessons along with the examination fee, whether you needed them or not.

Most language schools in Italy and abroad can help prepare you for the B1 test, though you’ll need to make sure the school you sit the exam with is accredited by one of the four recognised Italian institutions.

Find out more about the exam here.

Once you pass, you’ll have to wait a couple of months for the certificate to arrive so that you can attach it to your application (mine took just under two months, which is standard.)

But while that process is in motion, you can turn your attention to the other documents on the list.

Note that the official copies of your marriage certificate and criminal record will only be valid for six months after you get them, so these are best tackled later.

Know the costs

The application fee is €250, though other costs quickly add up.

There’s the language exam, the fees paid to government offices for releasing documents, stamp fees, international courier fees, and – the biggest cost for me – fees for sworn translations.

In my case, it all came to around €1,200. While this is a lot of money to me, I tried to keep in mind that citizenship applications can cost much, much more.

Many readers applying for Italian citizenship via ancestry, which is very often a lengthy and complex legal process, have told us of costs totalling between $10,000 and $15,000, and even up to $25,000 (most applicants we heard from were based in the US).

Meanwhile, the application fee alone for citizenship of my home country, the UK, is £1,630.

It’s all done online

The first thing to know is that the application process has now moved completely online.

There will still be plenty of analogue paper and pen-pushing to do when gathering documents. But the actual application itself must be filed electronically via the Italian interior ministry’s website, after which it will be handled by the prefettura in your province.

Applications for Italian citizenship by marriage must be filed electronically via the interior ministry’s website

Applications for Italian citizenship by marriage must be filed electronically via the interior ministry’s website. Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

You’ll need to use the ministry’s online portal here to put the application together by filling out all of the required information on the electronic form (little by little if necessary – you can save your progress and return to it later).

You’ll need to upload digital copies of all of the required documents. Since you’ll be given most of them in hard copy, having access to a scanner comes in very useful at this point.

Once that’s done, you’ll pay the application fee and 16-euro marca di bollo via the same portal, which takes you to the official PagoPA payment website, and then stores an electronic copy of the receipt for you automatically.

While some people might insist that you should pay these fees at the post office, bank, or tabaccheria, that’s no longer the case: the payment process has been online only since 2022.

The idea of completing a digital application using a website run by the Italian state didn’t exactly fill me with confidence, but I have to say it all worked very smoothly and I had no technical issues.

To log in to the portal you’ll need either a SPID digital identity or your Italian electronic ID card (CIE).

You can do it yourself – but you don’t have to

While I found filing the application fairly straightforward, there is professional help available if you want it.

In fact, staff at the prefettura handling my application said they were surprised that I’d filed it myself, as apparently most applicants use the services of a patronato, or occasionally, an immigration lawyer.

If you’re in doubt about any part of the process, these professionals can be invaluable in helping to gather the documents, uploading them in the correct formats, filling out the application for you in Italian, and generally making sure no mistakes are made.

I did look into using a patronato when I first embarked on the process, but all those I contacted were extremely busy. So you may also want to factor in some extra time to find one who is available.

Find out more about what a patronato does and how to find one near you in this guide.

Prepare for a long wait

Submitting your application will be a huge relief after months (or years) of working on it.

After that, all you can do is wait. The prefettura has up to three years to either approve or deny your application, or they may ask for further information. If approved, they’ll then want to see the hard copies of your documents.

The time limit for processing applications was increased in 2018 from two to four years and then changed again in 2020 to two years with a maximum extension of one additional year.

The 2018 law change also means that applications from spouses can now be denied – and are automatically denied if they are not processed within the maximum time frame (whereas before they were automatically granted.)

Every province may handle the process slightly differently. I know my local prefettura gets a relatively low number of applications – at least compared to Rome or Milan – so I had hoped it might be somewhat faster, but I’ve since found out that they take the maximum amount of time as standard.

At the time of writing, I’m still waiting and hoping that all the time, money, and pazienza involved in filing my application will eventually pay off.

Find out more about getting your Italian passport and what happens after your request for Italian citizenship is approved.

For more information about applying for Italian citizenship through marriage, see the Italian foreign ministry’s website or contact the Italian consulate in your country of origin.

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