(ANSA) - Romano Prodi, the unanointed leader of the centre-left opposition, reconfirmed on Tuesday his support for the rights of unwed couples.
Undaunted by the storm his stance has triggered in Catholic Italy, the former European Commission chief argued that a law protecting the legal rights of long-term, cohabiting couples was long overdue.
"There are people who have lived together for years, who have children and have problems over inheritance, housing and pension issues. We are talking about millions of people affected by such problems and we must do something about it," said Prodi, a liberal Catholic.
The number of Italians living together out of wedlock has soared in recent years but such couples have none of the legal rights of married couples. There are currently nine bills before the Italian
parliament but progress has been stalled by disagreement on their contents and the opposition of many Catholic lawmakers.
Prodi and most of the centre left support legislation akin to France's Civil Solidarity Pact (PACS), which grants cohabiting couples similar administrative and financial benefits as married ones.
On Monday, the centre-right governing coalition and the Catholic Church launched an attack on Prodi after he said homosexual couples would not be excluded. Critics likened the former premier to Spanish Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero who has brought in legislation legalising same-sex marriages in Spain.
Vatican daily Osservatore Romano accused Prodi of undermining marriage and the moral framework of society, and sacrificing family values to election considerations.
Prodi, who is expected to face off against Premier Silvio Berlusconi in general elections next spring, stressed on Tuesday that his proposals were "positive, important and civilised" and had nothing to do with matrimony or same-sex marriages.
"This is a distortion of my views which is causing me a great deal of suffering," he said.
Prodi received the backing of the main parties in the centre-left opposition.
The Democratic Left, the largest party, said that Prodi's stance had "nothing to do with Zapatero".
Several high-profile members of the Democratic Left and the opposition centrist Daisy party argued that Italy was behind the times and "one of the few remaining countries in Europe where unwed couples have no rights."
"Such couples represent a huge social phenomenon. It's no longer possible to impose the drastic choice of two options only - marriage on the one side and the total absence of any legal recognition or protection on the other," they said.
But not all centre-left parties expressed support for Prodi's ideas.
Clemente Mastella, leader of the small, Catholic centrist UDEUR party, threatened to withdraw from the coalition unless Prodi amended his views.
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.
Raffaele Torino noted that only three other members of the 25-nation bloc had a similar record in this area. He argued that the Italian legal system's socially conservative attitude towards unmarried straight and gay couples was increasingly out of step with the times.
According to national statistics bureau Istat, the number of unmarried couples living together in Italy doubled between 1994 and 2003 from 227,000 to 555,000.
