The Italian government has won a vote of confidence in the lower house of parliament, paving the way for a landmark bill on civil unions - including same-sex partnerships - to become law.
The lower house of parliament was due to give final approval to the bill later on Thursday after the confidence vote passed by 369 to 193, with 2 abstentions.
"This is a day for many to celebrate. A day for those who finally feel they have gained recognition, " centre-left prime minister Matteo Renzi wrote on Twitter.
"Today - 11 May - is a great day for our country and our democracy," tweted centre-left Senator Monica Cirinna, who first presented the civil unions bill in 2013.
But conservative opposition and Catholic politicians, who earlier forced the government to water down the bill, criticised the decision to call a confidence vote.
"Matteo Renzi is adopting thuggish means to get the civil unions bill approved," the Forza Italia party's chief whip in the lower house of parliament, Renato Brunetta tweeted.
"Cirinna's bill is against parliament and normal democratic debate," Brunetta wrote in a second Tweet.
Italy had been the last major Western country not to legally recognize gay couples and the civil unions has been heavily diluted due to opposition from conservative Catholic politicians and divisions within Renzi's ruling Democratic Party.
The bill passed its first major hurdle in late February when it was approved by the parliament's upper house Senate but only after a clause allowing stepchild adoption was removed after fierce opposition from conservative Catholics.
A provision in the bill obliging partners in a civil union to be faithful to each other was also dropped after the centre-right objected that this came too close to equating such unions with traditional marriage.
The final version of the bill gives gay couples the right to share a surname, draw on their partner's pension when they die, and inherit each other's assets in the same way as married people.
The fiercely debated bill's drawn-out progress through parliament was accompanied by mass protests by Catholic groups saying it went too far and gay activists claiming it did not go far enough.
