ROME—Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi managed to survive a key confidence vote in the lower house of Parliament on Friday, averting for now a government collapse in the euro zone's third-largest economy at a time when Italy is under pressure to provide credible measures to counter the European debt crisis.
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Demonstrators in Milan Friday protested education cuts; protesters are increasingly camping on Rome streets.
Mr. Berlusconi won with 316 votes in favor of his government and 301 votes against it. A majority of 309 was required to pass. The confidence motion was the eighth such vote in 2011 and the ninth in the past 12 months for the prime minister, who has used confidence votes to cajole his volatile center-right majority coalition into cohesion.
"This ambush has failed," Mr. Berlusconi said Friday, referring to the center-left opposition that tried to put in place filibustering tactics to win the vote and force Mr. Berlusconi to step down.
Though the vote secured Mr. Berlusconi's grip of power for now, he remains under fire from business leaders, European regulators and investors. Critics of the premier doubt the confidence votes ultimately mean lawmakers are willing to back the divisive economic overhauls needed to revive Italy's stagnant economy.
The Italian premier pledged to address the urgent problems the country is facing, including finalizing a long-awaited growth-boosting package. Analysts and political observers, however, highlighted growing divides in his conservative coalition that may put the government's survival at stake again.
"The final approval by Parliament of the [growth] decree might be another test for the government coalition in our view," Barclays analyst Fabio Fois wrote in a note.
Analysts at UniCredit said that Friday's win "avoids the political instability related to the possibility of an early election," but added that the road ahead is bumpy. The UniCredit analysts said new cracks could open within the governing coalition on a range of issues, such as who should succeed Mario Draghi, the next European Central Bank chief, at the helm of Italy's central bank.
"The ruling coalition remains divided on several issues, like the final shape of the 'growth decree' and the structural reform effort," they wrote.
On the Italian streets, meanwhile, a protest movement is taking shape similar to the "Indignados" in Spain and "Occupy Wall Street" in the U.S. Dozens of protesters have been camping across the street from the Bank of Italy's headquarters in Rome.
In Milan, a small group of protesters broke off from a larger student protest on Friday and tossed eggs and garbage at the entrance of the offices of Goldman Sachs. The building was spray-painted with anti-Berlusconi slogans. The group also tried to reach the Milan headquarters of Fininvest, the Berlusconi family's holding company, but protesters were blocked by police, a Fininvest spokesman said. Protesters said they are holding a rally in Rome on Saturday.
Mr. Berlusconi, however, has remained defiant. He had called Friday's confidence vote after dismissing widespread demands to resign and insisting he wouldn't step aside and allow a technocrat government take office.
"This government will die of confidence," center-left opposition leader Pier Luigi Bersani quipped after the vote.
Economists and business leaders say Italy would be better served by a government of technocrats who could craft measures aimed at lowering the country's €1.9 trillion ($2.63 trillion) in public debt and addressing the weakest growth rate in the euro zone.
Write to Giada Zampano at giada.zampano@dowjones.com and Christopher Emsden at chris.emsden@dowjones.com
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