The party was started in 1995 by splinters of the
Italian People's Party (PPI) who wanted to join forces with
Silvio Berlusconi's
Forza Italia (FI). The split was led by
Rocco Buttiglione (outgoing secretary of the PPI),
Roberto Formigoni and
Gianfranco Rotondi. The CDU's symbol used the crusader shield (
scudo crociato) of
Christian Democracy. In the
1995 regional elections the CDU formed joint lists with FI and
Roberto Formigoni was elected
President of Lombardy, while in 1996 it formed an alliance with the
Christian Democratic Centre (CCD) for the
1996 general election, in which the CCD-CDU list scored 5.6%. In June 1998 Buttiglione led the party into the
Democratic Union for the Republic (UDR), a new Christian-democratic outfit launched by
Francesco Cossiga and
Clemente Mastella, who had left CCD to form the
Christian Democrats for the Republic (CDR). In October, when Buttiglione briefly decided to support the
centre-left government of
Massimo D'Alema, along with the UDR,
Roberto Formigoni,
Raffaele Fitto,
Maurizio Lupi and several regional councillors in
Veneto,
Lombardy and
Piedmont left the party to form the
Christian Democrats for Freedom, which was later merged into Forza Italia. In February 1999 the UDR split between supporters of Cossiga, who formed the
Union for the Republic (UpR), and the supporters of Mastella, who formed the
Union of Democrats for Europe (UDEur). In the event, Buttiglione re-established the CDU as an independent party and started a rapprochement with Berlusconi. In the
1999 European Parliament election the CDU obtained 2.2% and two MEPs, Buttiglione and
Vitaliano Gemelli. In the
2001 general election it formed an electoral alliance with CCD, known as the
White Flower, gaining 3.2% of the vote. Following the election, Buttiglione was appointed Minister of European Affairs in
Berlusconi II Cabinet. In December 2002 the CDU, the CCD and
European Democracy (2.3% in 2001) were merged into the
Union of Christian and Centre Democrats (UDC), of which Buttiglione was elected president, an office he would hold for twelve years. ==Electoral results==