A northern city's controversial bid to grant family status to cohabiting couples including same-sex ones suffered a legal setback this week.
Padua's centre-left council approved a motion last December allowing couples to register with the city as "families based on ties of affection" and receive certificates attesting to their family status.
Such documents are required in Italy for certain administrative and legal procedures such as joining public housing waiting lists or obtaining rights to assist sick family members.
The motion was drawn up by an openly gay, leftist councillor.
But an appeals court on Monday annulled the council's directive, saying that it "created confusion" between married and unmarried couples.
Acting on a suit filed by two lawyers, the regional administrative appeals court TAR (which is often called on in legal tangles involving private citizens or companies and the State) said the forms that cohabiting couples were required to fill out were "full of glaring errors and omissions".
Padua council officials were unfazed by the verdict and said they would revise the forms in the light of the court's objections.
City Mayor Flavio Zanonato said that "this sentence has nothing to do with our motion, which remains valid".
But Alessandro Zan, the councillor behind the initiative, said the TAR's ruling was "unheard of" and affected at least 30 unwed couples.
"These couples are only seeking legitimate recognition of their rights and should not be at the mercy of juridical wrangling," Zan said.
Zan's motion caused a storm in Catholic Italy, where the issue of rights for unwed partners is an explosive one.
The Vatican said it was the thin end of the wedge which would eventually lead to the legalisation of gay marriages.
In Italy, unwed heterosexual and homosexual couples currently have no shared rights to social benefits, property and inheritance - a situation which critics say is increasingly anomalous in Europe.
Centre-left Premier Romano Prodi promised to remedy this in his election programme.
But the Catholic Church is fiercely opposed to any such legislation, saying it will undermine the institution of marriage and traditional family values.
The Church has expressed particular alarm over the extension to gay partners.
In March, the Italian Bishops Conference (CEI) went as far as issuing a directive telling Catholic MPs to vote against any laws granting rights to cohabiting couples.
Catholics on both sides of the political divide applauded the CEI's action.
Prodi would need the full support of his nine-party coalition, which includes Catholic centrists, if any such legislation were to pass the Senate, where he holds only two more seats than the opposition.
