In the
1999 European Parliament election the Bonino List, thanks to its standard-bearer's popularity and a massive use of commercials, won a surprisingly high 8.5% of the vote and 7
MEPs (Emma Bonino,
Marco Pannella,
Benedetto Della Vedova,
Marco Cappato,
Olivier Dupuis,
Maurizio Turco and
Gianfranco Dell'Alba), thus becoming the fourth largest party in the country by European representation. The MEPs co-founded the short-lived
Technical Group of Independents. The list, which gathered the support of disgruntled voters, women and young people, did particularly well in
Northern Italy (13.2% in
Piedmont, 13.0% in
Friuli-Venezia Giulia, 11.9% in
Veneto, 11.6% in
Lombardy, 10.8% in
Liguria), where its proposed libertarian policies were very popular, especially among disappointed
Lega Nord's supporters, while it did fairly worse in the conservative and
statist South (below 4% in
Basilicata,
Calabria and
Sicily). The list failed to join any electoral major political coalition both for the 2000 regional elections (in which Radical regional councillors were elected in Piedmont and Lombardy) and especially for
2001 general election. The Radicals thus returned to their traditional share of vote at around 2%. This is what happened also in the
2004 European Parliament election, when only Bonino and Pannella were re-elected and were founding members of the
ALDE Group. In 2001 the Radicals re-organised themselves as a party for the first time since 1989, when the late
Radical Party was transformed into the
Transnational Radical Party. The "Bonino List" banner was used for the last time in 2004 and the next year the Radicals decided to join the
centre-left The Union coalition, by joining forces with the
Italian Democratic Socialists in
2006 general election (through the
Rose in the Fist), and directly the newly-formed
Democratic Party in
2008. ==References==