European election results map. Blue denotes provinces with a Forza Italia plurality, Red denotes those with a Democratic Party of the Left plurality, Yellow denotes provinces with a People's Party plurality, Brown and Gray and denotes those with an Autonomist plurality.
It was the first continental election after the scandal of Tangentopoli which destroyed the traditional republican parties of Italy: consequently, all new parties contested the race.
Electoral system
The pure party-list proportional representation was the traditional electoral system of the Italian Republic since its foundation in 1946, so it had been adopted to elect the Italian representatives to the European Parliament too. 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.