(This story has been refiled to fix a typo in paragraph 9)
ROME (Reuters) – Italy’s government has granted citizenship to Argentina’s President Javier Milei on account of his Italian family roots, a source with knowledge of the matter said on Friday, confirming earlier media reports.
Milei is in Rome to meet Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and to take part in her Brothers of Italy party’s annual festival on Saturday.
The source said the government had given Italian citizenship to the Argentine leader, declining to provide further details.
The news on Italian media triggered an angry reaction from some politicians and on social media from people protesting at citizenship being given to Milei when it is hard to obtain for the children of migrants born in Italy.
Italy’s citizenship laws are based on blood ties, meaning that even distant descendants of an Italian national can obtain an Italian passport.
Requirements for foreigners born in Italy or who migrate there, on the other hand, are much tougher. Pro-migrant groups have proposed a referendum to ease them, but Meloni’s right-wing coalition is against any relaxation.
Riccardo Magi, a lawmaker from the small opposition +Europa party, said granting citizenship to Milei was an act of “intolerable discrimination against so many young people who will only get it after many years.”
During a previous trip to Italy in February, Milei told a TV interview he felt “75% Italian” since three of his grandparents had Italian origins, and that he has “an incredible passion for Italian Opera.”
Libertarian Milei and conservative Meloni have established a close relationship. When they met in Buenos Aires last month, the Argentine leader gave his Italian guest a statuette of himself wielding his trademark chainsaw.
(Reporting by Angelo Amante, editing by Alvise Armellini and Gavin Jones)
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