This paper is about a relation between party fragmentation and ideological distance between parties in 18 European party systems in established democracies during six decades, starting in the 1950s. The study aims to answer this basic question: Does a high degree of party fragmentation tend to increase the ideological stretch within European party systems in established democracies? To determine ideological distances between parties, we study the Manifesto Project Database (MPD). To gauge party fragmentation, we use data from election results in established European democracies reported in the Comparative Political Dataset (CPD). Our preliminary findings suggest that high party fragmentation tend to lead to large ideological stretch within party systems on the Left-Right dimension, but not on the GAL-TAN dimension.