Italian Constitutional Court (Corte costituzionale), No. 33/2025, 21 marzo 2025 

The provisions on international adoptions that do not allow unmarried persons resident in Italy to adopt foreign children in a state of abandonment are unconstitutional.

Art. 2 Italian Constitution

Art. 117 Italian Constitution

Art. 29-bis Italian law on minors’ adoptions of 4 may 1983 no. 194

Art. 8 European Convention of Human Rights

1. Article 29-bis, paragraph 1 of Law no. 184 of 4 May 1983 is constitutionally unlawful insofar as it does not allow a person of full age, with free status, residing in Italy, to submit an application for a declaration of suitability for international adoption, so that the Court may issue a decree of suitability for adoption in favour of a single or unmarried person, whose parental aptitude has been positively ascertained in the course of the preliminary investigation, on the grounds of conflict with Articles 2 and 117, para. 1 of the Constitution, the latter in relation to Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

2. 

The normative evolution of the adoption discipline has seen the abandonment of the figure of the single person adopting the child; however, the same law has credited - albeit in limited hypotheses - the aptitude of the single person to guarantee in abstract a stable and harmonious environment for the child. Article 24(4) of Law No 184/1983 allows full adoption if ‘one of the spouses dies or becomes incapacitated during pre-adoptive fostering’: although it is ordered ‘in respect of both [spouses], with effect, for the deceased spouse, from the date of death’, the rule implies the child's placement in a single-parent household. Article 25(5) of Law No. 184/1983 provides that full adoption may be directly ordered against only one of the two prospective parents, who so requests, if ‘during pre-adoptive fostering there is a separation between the spouses’. Article 44 par. 3 of Law No. 184/1983 of 1983 recognises the abstract suitability of a single person to guarantee a stable and harmonious environment even in respect of children with disabilities.

3. The applicant, who is an unmarried Italian citizen, a magistrate since 2009, with no criminal record, with a psycho-physical capacity, unmarried and without children, with a composite and supportive family unit for the adoption project, complains of the violation of Article 117 of the Italian Constitution in relation to Article 8 ECHR on account of the different treatment of unmarried persons in the regulation of international adoptions compared to other types of adoption.