ABSTRACT
A few months earlier, the Italian radical left presented a united list called “The Other Europe with Tsipiras” (L’altra Europa con Tsipras) on the occasion of the European Parliament elections of May 25, 2014. With 4.03 percent of the vote, the list managed to overcome the 4 percent threshold and bring the Italian radical left back into the European Parliament. Five years earlier, the radical left had presented several lists (the main ones being Federation of the Left [Federazione della Sinistra] and Left and Freedom [Sinistra e Liberta`]), none of which had been successful. The unified list, spearheaded by the Party of Communist Refoundation (Partito della rifondazione comunista [PRC]), and Left Ecology and Freedom (Sinistra ecologia e liberta` [SEL]), had an explicitly European reference, as Tsipras was at that time running for the presidency of the European Commission. It was thus through the European channel that the fragmented Italian left could move toward reunification.
