A leading gay MP on Thursday criticized government infighting over granting rights to unwed couples, including gays, and called for new draft legislation to be approved as soon as possible.
Franco Grillini, a deputy with the largest party in the majority coalition, the Democratic Left (DS), said a bill that entered the Senate on Wednesday was both "important and necessary".
"Italy must deal with this growing social emergency, which can no longer be avoided in national political debate," said Grillini, urging the ruling centre-left coalition to reach an agreement on the matter as soon as possible.
If approved, the legislation would grant cohabiting couples, both heterosexual and homosexual, similar administrative and financial benefits to married ones.
Although it was tabled by the government, not all parties in Premier Romano Prodi's disparate nine-way coalition are in favour of the bill.
Justice Minister Clemente Mastella, who heads the tiny centrist, Catholic UDEUR party, has been a strong opponent, stressing that "married couples are one thing and unmarried ones are another".
Meanwhile Family Policy Minister Rosy Bindi, who helped draft the bill, has sought to play down the benefits granted to gay couples, stressing that the legislation will protect "individuals".
It has also met with widespread hostility from the opposition, with the centre-right coalition headed by former premier Silvio Berlusconi vowing to battle the bill in parliament.
The issue of legal rights for cohabiting couples including same-sex ones is a highly divisive one in Catholic Italy.
Opposition Catholics have called on like-minded members of the governing coalition to join forces with them in trying to sink the bill.
Although Prodi enjoys a strong hold over the House, his majority in the Senate rests on just one seat, making it extremely difficult for his government to get reforms approved unless they are broadly backed.
Government sources on Wednesday said this was why the bill had begun its parliamentary journey in the Senate. If agreement can be reached in the upper chamber, they said, fewer problems are expected in the House, where the bill enjoys wide support.
Unveiling the draft legislation in parliament, the head of the Senate Justice Committee Cesare Salvi said it would bring Italy in line with "all other civilized European countries".
According to the most recent available figures from national statistics bureau Istat, the number of unmarried couples living together in Italy doubled between 1994 and 2003 from 227,000 to 555,000.
Recent polls show that most Catholics in the country - 68.7% - are in favour of such legislation despite the repeated condemnation of Pope Benedict XVI.
A top Italian jurist pointed out earlier this year that unmarried heterosexual and gay couples in Italy had fewer legal rights than their counterparts almost anywhere else in Europe.
