In 2004, the party, along with Italy's Democracy is Freedom – The Daisy, was one of the founding members of the European Democratic Party, intended to be home to all those Christian democrats and centrists who were disillusioned with the new course of the European People's Party, which had welcomed the Rally for the Republic and later the UMP. With the exit of the most conservative, Christian-democratic and conservative-liberal components of the UDF in 1998 and 2002, the UDF was now more of a centrist party with socially liberal tendencies.