Berlusconi wins vote but loses vital majority

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's embattled centre-right coalition won a key vote in parliament on Tuesday but failed to garner an absolute majority of 316 seats.

Reuters/Alessandro Bianchi

The vote on Italy's 2010 public accounts, a precondition for the approval of any future budgets, was approved by 308 votes in favour, with one abstention after the opposition refused to vote.

"The government no longer has a majority in this chamber," Pier Luigi Bersani, leader of the main opposition Democratic Party, said after the vote.

Addressing Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi he added: "Hand in your resignation."

The premier's main coalition partner had called for his resignation ahead of the vote.
"We have asked him to step aside," Northern League party leader Umberto Bossi, a long-term ally of Berlusconi from the early 1990s, told reporters.

Global markets were focused on the political crisis playing out in Italy, the third-biggest economy in the eurozone, while European Union ministers held talks in Brussels in which they voiced concern about the situation.

The yield on Italian 10-year sovereign bonds rose to 6.73 percent -- its highest since the birth of the eurozone and a level that analysts believe is unsustainable in the longer-term and may even force Italy to seek a bailout.

European stock markets were up however, with Milan rising 2.40 percent.