Parliamentary elections were held in Lithuania on 10 October 2004, with a second round on 24 October 2004 in the constituencies where no candidate won a majority in the first round of voting. All 141 seats in the Seimas were up for election; 71 in single-seat constituencies elected by majority vote and the remaining 70 in a nationwide constituency based on proportional representation. The elections were won by the Labour Party with around 28% of the vote in the nationwide constituency and 39 seats in the Eighth Seimas, far short of the 71-seat majority. Outgoing government coalition "Working for Lithuania", consisting of the ruling Social Democratic Party of Lithuania and New Union (Social Liberals), won a total of 31 seats. Despite finishing behind Labour, the Social Democrats led a coalition government with New Union, Labour and the Peasants and New Democratic Party Union. Algirdas Brazauskas continued as the Prime Minister of Lithuania. Background The previous parliamentary elections were held on 8 October 2000. The Liberal Union of Lithuania emerged as the largest party in the parliament, with 34 of the 141 seats in the Eighth Seimas, followed by New Union (Social Liberals) with 29. The two parties formed a coalition government, with Rolandas Paksas of the Liberal Union as Prime Minister and Artūras Paulauskas of the New Union as Speaker. However, the coalition was not long-lived, and at the end of June 2001, the New Union formed a new coalition government with the Social Democratic Party, with Algirdas Brazauskas as Prime Minister. In the 2000 elections, the Social-Democratic Coalition of Algirdas Brazauskas, consisting of Democratic Labour Party, the Social Democratic Party, the Union of the Russians of Lithuania and the New Democracy Party, had won 51 seats. The Democratic Labour Party and Social Democrats, which had together won 45 of those seats, merged in 2001 under the name of the latter. Paksas, who had left the Liberal Union by the end of 2001, was elected President of Lithuania in 2003. In April 2004 he was impeached by the Seimas and removed from office, with Paulauskas serving as the acting president until elections later that year. Lithuania became a member of the European Union on 9 May 2004. The first elections to the European Parliament took place at the same day as the presidential election. The Labour Party, which was founded in October 2003, received almost one-third of all votes in