The Italian government will soon present draft legislation aimed at giving rights to unwed couples, Italian Equal Opportunities Minister Barbara Pollastrini said on Friday.
Pollastrini said the bill would be ready by the end of January.
"The government's commitment to presenting such a bill by the end of January 2007 is an important development and one which will be respected," she said.
The issue of legal rights for cohabiting couples including same-sex ones is a highly divisive one in Catholic Italy.
Premier Romano Prodi, who won the April general election, promised in his election programme to introduce legislation akin to France's Civil Solidarity Pact (PACS), which grants cohabiting couples including homosexual ones similar administrative and financial benefits as married ones.
He has come under pressure from left-wing elements in his nine-way coalition to push ahead with such legislation following moves earlier this week by a northern city to allow cohabiting couples to register as families.
The centre-left council of Padua approved a motion on Monday allowing unwed couples including same-sex ones 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.
Cabinet members including Family Policy Minister Rosy Bindi subsequently said it was time for the government to quickly move forward on its pledge to bring in a law protecting the rights of unmarried couples.
But not all parties in Proid's disparate nine-way coalition are in favour of the idea.
Justice Minister Clemente Mastella, who heads the tiny centrist, Catholic UDEUR party, has been a strong opponent.
Mastella said on Friday that "the government won't fall on an issue like this... but the family is the family. Married couples are one thing and unmarried ones are another".
The centre-right opposition headed by former premier Silvio Berlusconi vowed to battle such a bill in parliament.
Berlusconi's Forza Italia party likened Prodi to Spanish Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero who has brought in legislation legalising same-sex marriages in Spain.
"Prodi is a poor copy of Zapatero," Forza Italia said.
According to 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 PACS-style 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 almost anywhere else in Europe.
