1989 European Parliament election in Italy

The 1989 European Parliament election in Italy was held on 18 June 1989. The election was paired with 1989 Italian advisory referendum, a non-binding referendum about the devolution of powers to the European Economic Community (EEC), which passed with overwhelming support from voters.

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.

For more than 35 years, the Italian Communist Party (PCI) had thought that their final victory was no more than a matter of time; however, the deindustrialization of Italy during the 1980s showed that the time had expired. The decline of the traditional opponents of Christian Democracy (DC) opened the door to new forms of protests: the Federation of Green Lists (LV) and the Lombard League (LL) in Northern Italy. The government of Ciriaco De Mita did not survive to this vote. The declining Italian Republican Party (PRI) fired its leader Giovanni Spadolini, and the new secretary Giorgio La Malfa retired his support to De Mita. The DC chose Giulio Andreotti as the new prime minister.

• European Parliament