We have received a few requests for clarification on the following topic: in its meeting on Friday in which it adopted the “package of measures on citizenship’, the Council of Ministers also adopted some measures to modernise the provision of services such as legalisation, registry and records, passports and identity cards valid for expatriation.
The changes to the passport law are either formal in nature or are minor adjustments to bring the law (which dates back to 1967) up to date and consistent with international standards in use in recent years.
For example, the rules that envisaged the possibility of extending the duration of a passport without changing the passport booklet are formally repealed. These rules have not been applied for years, because passports must be readable by machine-readable devices at airports and the initial expiry date cannot therefore be changed by a stamp on another page. In fact, even now, passports are no longer issued with a 5-year renewable validity, but directly with validity for 10 years. It is therefore confirmed that passports, which are now already issued with a 10-year validity and no longer with a 5-year renewable one, will continue to have a 10-year non-renewable validity.
Other examples of formal changes are the following: the rules on collective passports are repealed (which in international standards are no longer accepted and in fact collective passports have not been updated for years); fines, which are still indicated in Italian Lire, are adjusted to the Euro.
There are other minor changes for citizens abroad. For example, Consulates are authorised to issue travel declarations for minors in cases when the foreign countries where minors have to travel require this type of document. Those who lose or have their passport stolen abroad are required to also report it to the police authorities of the country where they are, in order to avoid abuses and to allow the theft to be reported also in the systems of the foreign country where the theft occurred (in the event of impossibility or difficulty in making the report, however, the Consulate can still proceed to issue a replacement passport to the citizen). These are therefore adjustments that actually reflect practices already in use.
