Since Italy became a country in 1861, there has been a surefire way to know who is and isn’t an Italian citizen: look at their parents.

The first page of the civil code, published in 1865 as the rulebook to Europe’s newest country, declared that a child born to an Italian citizen was an Italian citizen.

This founding tenet of the Bel Paese now looks set to change — ending diaspora dreams of returning to the mother country, and meaning that Italians who move abroad risk denying citizenship to their descendants.

On Thursday the Constitutional Court said it would rule in favor of the government and its controversial 2025 law that restricted citizenship for those born abroad. The law — issued last March via emergency decree — had been challenged by four judges, who questioned its constitutionality.