Giorgia Meloni’s government has conferred Italian citizenship on Javier Milei in a sign of the growing rapport between the two hard-Right leaders.
Mr Milei, Argentina’s libertarian president, is in Rome to attend the annual festival of Ms Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party. He has Italian roots through his grandparents, and his sister and chief advisor Karine Milei has also been given citizenship.
Last month, Mr Milei gave the Italian prime minister a statuette of himself wielding a chainsaw – his trademark move at campaign rallies.
The award of citizenship has been met with objections from Italy’s opposition, who have been fruitlessly campaigning to make it easier for children born in Italy to migrant parents to claim the status.
Under the current rules, hundreds of thousands of Italian-speaking migrant children born in Italy are barred from applying for citizenship until they are 18.
“Big party today at Palazzo Chigi (the prime minister’s official residence) for President Milei who received Italian citizenship thanks to his grandparents who left Italy 100 years ago,” commented Riccardo Magi, head of +Europa, a centre-Left party.
“But for the hundreds of thousands of people born here, who grew up here, who study here, who pay taxes here, in contrast to Milei, becoming Italian is a huge ordeal.”
Milei’s ‘right of blood’
Mr Magi called the Milei decision an act of “intolerable discrimination against so many young people who will only get it after many years”.
Mr Milei was awarded citizenship on the basis of the principle of “ius sanguis” – the right of blood – which means that anyone with Italian roots can get a passport.
It is possible for those born in the country to become Italian through “ius solis” – the right of the soil – but not until a person has reached adulthood.
Pro-migrant campaigners have called for a referendum to ease rules for obtaining Italian nationality for people moving to or being born in Italy, which are much stricter than for those with even distant blood ties to the country. However, Ms Meloni’s coalition government has ruled that out.
Mr Milei is the guest of honour on Saturday night at the Brothers of Italy annual festival, which is being held in the Circus Maximus ancient arena in Rome.
On a previous trip to Italy in February, Mr Milei said he felt “75 per cent Italian” because three of his grandparents had Italian origins. His relatives moved to Argentina from Calabria in the south of Italy in 1926.
The President added that he had “an incredible passion for Italian opera”.
Mr Milei is not the first Argentinian president with dual citizenship. Mauricio Macri, who served between 2015 and 2019, had an Italian passport.