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EQUALITY

Italy ‘one of the worst countries in Europe’ for gay and trans rights

Italy continues to perform poorly compared to the rest of Europe when it comes to LGBTQ+ protections, a leading rights organisation has warned.

Published: 4 June 2024 16:18 CEST
Participants wave a rainbow flag during the annual Pride March in Rome on June 11, 2022.
Participants wave a rainbow flag during the annual Pride March in Rome on June 11, 2022. Photo by Filippo MONTEFORTE / AFP.

Pride month is getting underway in Italy, with events and parades planned in towns and cities across the country to mark the occasion.

But celebrations don’t necessarily provide a good measure of how well a country is doing when it comes to LGBTQ+ protections – and major rights groups say Italy is lagging far behind neighbouring countries.

Italy is in fact one of the worst countries in Europe for gay and trans rights, according to the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association’s Europe chapter, ILGA-Europe.

ILGA-Europe’s Rainbow Map, which ranks 49 European countries based on their LGBTI equality laws and policies, placed Italy at 35 on the list for 2024.

Italy scored 25.4 percent for its protections for and rights granted to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, compared to an EU average of 50.6 percent.

Compared to other EU states, only Latvia (37), Bulgaria (38), Romania (39), and Poland (41) rank lower.

Nearby Malta, with its strong hate speech and gender recognition protections, came first, while Spain ranks in fourth place.

Source:ILGA-Europe Rainbow Map

ILGA-Europe’s 2024 review highlights that hate speech against LGBTI people in Italy is “openly perpetuated” by the government of far-right Prime Minister Georgia Meloni, who has pledged to fight what she calls the “LGBT lobby”.

Since coming to office in October 2022, the prime minister has elevated lawmakers who think along similar lines.

In early 2023, MP Federico Mollicone of Meloni’s post-fascist Brothers of Italy party described same-sex parenthood as “not normal” and surrogacy as “worse than paedophilia”.

Senate speaker Ignazio La Russa, who co-founded Brothers of Italy with Meloni, has said he would be “sorry” to have a gay son.

Despite this, Italy did make some strides towards equal rights in 2023.

A national collective labour agreement for the education, university and research sector that came into force in July requires employers to let trans staff use gender-neutral bathrooms or bathrooms matching their gender identity.

And in May of last year the Senate voted in favour of a motion to combat criminalisation based on sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) around the world.

But these were overshadowed by significant setbacks in the area of family rights, after the interior ministry issued a directive instructing town councils around the country to only put biological parents’ names on birth certificates, and ordered the mayor of Milan to stop legally recognising both parents in same-sex families.

READ ALSO: Milan stops recognising children born to same-sex couples

This was followed by an order from Padua’s Prosecutor’s Office that the city’s registry offices cancel 33 birth certificates featuring the names of two same-sex parents, and the lower house’s approval in July of a bill that would make surrogacy a “universal” crime including for Italians who seek out the service abroad.

To improve its ranking, Italy should introduce marriage equality and make co-parenting rights of same-sex couples automatic, ILGA-Europe recommends.

The organisation also endorses banning medically unnecessary surgery on intersex minors and “depathologising trans identities”.

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ITALIAN CITIZENSHIP

True Italians: Music festival casts spotlight on children left waiting for citizenship

Children born to foreign parents in Italy must wait until they are 18 to apply for citizenship, and then have just one year to do so or face a years-long wait - a process some have described as a 'psychological violence'.

Published: 15 March 2024 09:53 CET
True Italians: Music festival casts spotlight on children left waiting for citizenship

When rapper Ghali sang “I’m a true Italian” to 10 million television viewers last month, he spoke for hundreds of thousands of people born to immigrants in Italy who struggle to obtain citizenship.

The 30-year-old musician, born in Milan to Tunisian parents, sang a version of Toto Cutugno’s global hit “L’Italiano” (The Italian) at the Sanremo music festival, one of the biggest cultural events in Italy.

In doing so, Ghali – who was naturalised only at 18 – put the issue of the so-called “New Italians”, as second-generation immigrants are often known, centre stage.

Italy has one of the toughest citizenship regimes in Europe, with children born in the country to foreign parents unable to apply for an Italian passport until they are 18.

They have only one year to apply under a streamlined system, otherwise they must enter a costly and lengthy process, during which time they are left in limbo.

READ ALSO: ‘We’re Italian too’: Second-generation migrants renew calls for citizenship

“I feel Italian, I went to school here, Italian is the language I speak every day but I wasn’t a true Italian by law until I was 24, when I obtained citizenship,” said Daniela Ionita.

Now a spokeswoman for campaign group Italians Without Citizenship, she describes the failure to allow children to become citizens as “psychological violence”.

But she has little hope of a change in the law under the current hard-right government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, whose deputy, Matteo Salvini, regularly rails against immigration.

Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini regularly rails against immigration. Photo by Piero CRUCIATTI / AFP.

Blood ties

Italy has long been a country of emigration, not immigration, and has taken an approach to citizenship that helps maintain ties with this wide diaspora.

Nationality is based on blood ties, granted to those born to or adopted by Italian citizens.

Foreigners can obtain citizenship, most easily if they have Italian relatives or marry an Italian, but for most it is a long and difficult path.

“The law on access to citizenship in Italy is one of the toughest in Europe,” notes demographer Salvatore Strozza.

Children born and raised in Italy have no innate right to citizenship, except in rare cases where their parents are unknown or stateless.

READ ALSO: Will my children get an Italian passport if born in Italy?

They must wait until they become adults to apply, and then submit their application for citizenship between the ages of 18 and 19, with proof of uninterrupted residency in Italy.

If they miss that window, it becomes a complex bureaucratic process, which can take at least three years.

“It’s the longest administrative procedure in Italy,” said immigration lawyer Antonello Ciervo.

“An Argentine who has an Italian grandfather will be naturalised faster than a person born in Italy to foreign parents,” he told AFP.

For children who arrived in Italy at a young age, they must also wait until they are adults to secure citizenship, in the same way as other “foreigners”.

Someone born in a non-EU country must show 10 years of residency – compared with four for those born inside the bloc – and prove they have the means to support themselves.

At least 860,000 people born in Italy to foreign parents are currently eligible for naturalisation, of whom 95 percent are aged under 18, according to national statistics agency Istat.

Failed reform

Previous attempts to reform the current system, which dates to 1992, have failed – the most recent in 2022, just before Meloni took office.

Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party has promoted the racist ‘Great Replacement’ theory. Photo by Andreas SOLARO / AFP.

Her far-right Brothers of Italy party is opposed to granting citizenship to those born here to foreign parents – and some members have raised the spectre of “ethnic replacement” of Italians by migrants, a concept promoted by white supremacists.

Meloni has focused instead on raising the birth rate in Italy, which has an ageing population.

Since her coalition came to power, several groups agitating for reform have paused their efforts.

“We are afraid that our efforts will be in vain or worse, that the naturalisation process will be lengthened” by the introduction of stricter checks, said Ionita.

“While waiting for a change in government, we are trying to change mentalities at a cultural and community level,” she added.

Some progress has been made on this front – Bologna, a bastion of the political left, in 2022 became the first commune to grant symbolic citizenship to all those born or raised in the northern Italian city.

“First we need to change the concept of who is an Italian within society, and then we can look to a change at the political level,” added Deepika Salhan, a member of another campaign group, “On the right side of history”.

By AFP’s Lucile COPPALLE and Gael BRANCHEREAU

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