by Alessandra Cardone
ROME, May 27 (Xinhua) -- Eurosceptic League was Italy's largest party after elections to renew the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) were held here on Sunday, official results on Monday showed.
With all votes counted, the rightwing force led by Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini won 34.3 percent, confirming the big surge suggested by all exit polls and partial data released over the night after the vote closure.
In the previous European elections held in 2014, the League had earned 6.15 percent.
Center-left Democratic Party (PD) -- Italy's major opposition force and pro-European -- scored as second-most voted force in the country with 22.7 percent, the Interior Ministry data showed.
Populist Five Star Movement (M5S) led by Luigi Di Maio, also Deputy Prime Minister, ranked third, reaching 17 percent of the vote.
While the victory of ruling League -- which run a strong anti-immigrant campaign -- did not come as a surprise, but for a final percentage of votes higher than any projection, the real unexpected result was the pro-European PD's overtaking the Five Star Movement.
The M5S is the League's current partner in the Italian rightwing government coalition, and the drastic change in the balance of power between the two forces has prompted doubts on whether the EU vote is likely to affect the stability of the Italian cabinet in the next months, or not.
Among other contenders, center-right Forza Italia (FI) led by former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi reached 8.8 percent, and rightwing Fratelli d'Italia (Brothers of Italy) made 6.4 percent, the Interior Ministry also stated.
All of the other lists did not reach 4 percent, which is the threshold necessary to enter the European Union (EU) assembly.
Eligible voters were 50.9 million people out of a 60.3-million total population, and turnout was 56.09 percent against 58.6 percent in the previous EU vote in 2014.
Italy elected 76 members of the European parliament, which is made of 751 representatives from all of the (current) 28 member states.
Three of the newly elected MEPS here will take office only after Britain completes its process of exiting the EU later this year, thus allowing its seats in the assembly to be redistributed among the remaining 27 member states of the bloc.
