1979 European Parliament election in Italy

10 June 1979 1984 →
elected members
All 81 Italian seats to the European Parliament
Turnout	85.7%
Party Leader % Seats DC Benigno Zaccagnini 36.5% 29 PCI Enrico Berlinguer 29.6% 24 PSI Bettino Craxi 11.0% 9 MSI Giorgio Almirante 5.5% 4 PSDI Pietro Longo 4.3% 4 PR Marco Pannella 3.7% 3 PLI Valerio Zanone 3.6% 3 PRI Giovanni Spadolini 2.6% 2 PdUP Luciana Castellina 1.2% 1 DP Mario Capanna 0.7% 1 SVP Silvius Magnago 0.6% 1 This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below. Major party in each Province.

The 1979 European Parliament election in Italy was held on 10 June 1979.

A week before Italy had voted for its general election: the lack of matching between the two elections caused much controversy for wasting public money.

Electoral system

The pure party-list proportional representation was the traditional electoral system of the Italian Republic since its foundation in 1946, so it was naturally adopted to elect the Italian representatives to the European Parliament. Two levels were used: a national level to divide seats between parties, and a constituency level to distribute them between candidates. Italian regions were united in 5 constituencies, each electing a group of deputies. At national level, seats were divided between party lists using the largest remainder method with Hare quota. All seats gained by each party were automatically distributed to their local open lists and their most voted candidates.

Results

This election taking place just a week after the general election, it obviously gave a similar result. However, the minor importance of the European ballot caused a lower turnout, which particularly punished the two major parties, the Christian Democracy and the Italian Communist Party. The small Italian Liberal Party had a breath of fresh air from this vote, doubling its percentage compared to seven days before.