Italy's Prime Minister Romano Prodi has survived a confidence vote in the Senate this afternoon, winning the stamp of approval for his new government from the upper house of parliament where he has just two seats more than the opposition.
Mr Prodi won by 165 votes to 155, with his margin of victory boosted by a "yes" vote from all seven of Italy's unelected senators for life.
Romano Prodi is congratuled by senators after winning his first vote of confidence in the Senate today
"It couldn't have gone better," Mr Prodi said, moments after winning a crucial vote that, had he lost, would have seen him stripped of power and probably finished his political career.
Instead of being a mere symbolic rite of passage, the Senate vote was an uncomfortable test for Prodi as the tiny majority he scraped at April's general election meant he needed all his senators to be present and voting for him.
He now faces a second confidence vote, early next week, from the lower house. There he has a larger majority due to an electoral system which awards the winning coalition a bundle of extra seats.
The centre-left administration has 158 Senate seats against 156 for the opposition led by Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister who still contests the April 9-10 election result and has predicted the new government will soon collapse.
"We have a solid and cohesive majority in both chambers," Mr Prodi said in a speech ahead of the vote, to howls of derision from centre-right senators.
Although Mr Prodi survived this first test, the tension revealed cracks in his coalition which is made up of an array of parties stretching from the centre to the hard left.
A junior government party, Italy of Values, threatened to vote against Prodi in protest at his decision not to appoint a cabinet minister in charge of the interests of Italians abroad. It withdrew the threat at the last moment.
Mr Prodi would probably have survived such a desertion, but even the talk of it just two days after becoming prime minister was a bad omen for future votes where he will have to rely on coalition loyalty to get legislation past a hostile opposition.