[jkaplowitz]

Doing so before 1992 (or as late as 2001 if notification requirements were not complied with) would have lost him his Italian citizenship, unless an exception applied. I can understand being satisfied with a stable situation for most of that time, and with not wanting to handle naturalization paperwork in the last decades of life.

[masayoshis_son]

Good point. I somehow assumed EC citizens would be exempt from such laws but that doesn't necessarily seem to be the case even now [1], and must have been very different before the 1992 Maastricht treaty indeed.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_of_the_European_Un...