The Sunflower was an electoral alliance

Electoral alliance

An electoral alliance may take the form of a bipartisan electoral agreement, electoral agreement, electoral coalition or electoral bloc. It is an association of political parties or individuals which exists solely to stand in elections...

 of two Italian centre-left parties for the 2001 Italian general election

Italian general election, 2001

A national general election was held in Italy on May 13, 2001 to elect members of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate of the Republic. The 14th Parliament of the Italian republic was chosen....

, namely:

• Federation of the Greens
  Federation of the Greens
  The Federation of the Greens is a green political party in Italy, which includes also a large eco-socialist faction. Since 2009 the party leader is Angelo Bonelli.-Early years:...
  
   (Federazione dei Verdi)
• Italian Democratic Socialists
  Italian Democratic Socialists
  The Italian Democratic Socialists were a small social-democratic political party in Italy. Led by Enrico Boselli, the party was the direct continuation of the Italian Socialists, the legal successor of the historical Italian Socialist Party...
  
   (Socialisti Democratici Italiani, SDI)

The Sunflower was founded to benefit from the proportional list

Party-list proportional representation

Party-list proportional representation systems are a family of voting systems emphasizing proportional representation in elections in which multiple candidates are elected...

 voting system employed in the election; however, the member parties received too few votes to benefit from their alliance. They did manage to enter parliament via its participation on the Olive Tree list, however, so the electoral alliance was disbanded soon afterwards.