Rights of Italian citizens and residents: Commission satisfied with ECRI report

The President of the San Marino Commission, Alessandro Amadi, expressed satisfaction with the report published last June by the Council of Europe’s Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), which followed a monitoring visit of a Strasbourg delegation to the republic a year earlier.

In fact, ECRI implements a periodic control procedure in the Member States, holding discussions with institutional representatives and civil society to assess any issues related to phenomena of racism, intolerance, xenophobia and anti-Semitism in order to protect human rights.

Among the various recommendations for San Marino in the body of the report are to “review the rules for acquiring San Marino citizenship by naturalization in order to shorten the period of continuous residence required to submit an application”, “introduce greater flexibility with regard to dual nationality when acquiring San Marino citizenship” and “grant the right to foreign citizens resident in San Marino to be eligible to stand in local elections”.

The recommendations made by ECRI several times in the past are in full compliance with the request made not long ago by the San Marino Commission to remove from the current legislation the obligation to renounce original citizenship as a condition for acquiring San Marino citizenship and to introduce the right to participate in elections during the Castle Parliamentary elections. According to Amadi, “it is time to overcome cultural paradigms that prevent us from thinking about citizenship issues in the right perspective, transcending prejudices, unreasonable fears and outdated stereotypes. When we talk about citizenship and the participation of foreign residents in public life, we are talking about citizenship rights, a set of fundamental freedoms and privileges that protect human dignity and build a just and democratic society. These issues are of great concern, considering that the reform of the citizenship law and the recognition of the right of foreign residents to vote in local elections will be an inevitable step in the coming months, also from the perspective of San Marino’s move closer to Europe”.