2004 European Parliament election in Italy

The 2004 European Parliament election in Italy was held on 12 and 13 June 2004. Italy's highly fragmented party system made it hard to identify an overall trend, but the results were generally seen as a defeat for Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and a victory for the centre-left coalition identified with Romano Prodi, who was President of the European Commission until 2004, and was widely expected to re-enter Italian politics at the 2006 Italian general election.

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2004 European Parliament election in Italy

← 1999 13 June 2004 2009 →
outgoing members elected members
All 78 Italian seats to the European Parliament
Turnout	71.72% ( 1.99 pp)
Party Leader Vote % Seats +/– The Olive Tree Romano Prodi 31.08 28 +4 FI Silvio Berlusconi 20.93 16 −6 AN Gianfranco Fini 11.49 9 +1 PRC Fausto Bertinotti 6.06 5 +1 UDC Pier Ferdinando Casini 5.89 5 +1 LN Umberto Bossi 4.96 4 0 Greens Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio 2.47 2 0 PdCI Oliviero Diliberto 2.42 2 0 Bonino List Emma Bonino 2.25 2 −5 IdV Antonio Di Pietro 2.14 2 New SUE Gianni De Michelis 2.04 2 New UDEUR Clemente Mastella 1.29 1 0 AS Alessandra Mussolini 1.23 1 New Pensioners Carlo Fatuzzo 1.15 1 0 Tricolour Flame Luca Romagnoli 0.73 1 0 SVP Elmar Pichler Rolle 0.45 1 0 This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below. Major party in each province

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The common list of The Olive Tree (Ulivo), comprising mainly the Democrats of the Left (DS) and Democracy is Freedom – The Daisy (DL), became the largest list, with an important psychological effect; however, expectations for this list were originally somewhat larger, and Massimo D'Alema had made a proclaim about the fall of the second Berlusconi government ("If the unity list reaches 33%, the government has to go").

While the Olive Tree's performance was not as phenomenal as it had hoped, the test indicated a somewhat reduced support for the centre-right coalition. In European elections, Italians tend to vote in a more candidate-oriented way, giving their vote more easily to a candidate outside their usual party; this generally reduces the significance of these elections.