Nea Dimokratia

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Νέα Δημοκρατία New Democracy
Party leader	Kyriakos Mitsotakis (Prime Minister)
founding	4th October 1974
Headquarters	Athens
Alignment	Liberal Conservatism pro-European Christian Democracy
Colours)	blue
Parliament seats	158/300
International connections	Christian Democratic International , International Democratic Union
MEPs	8/21
European party	European People's Party (EPP)
EP Group	Group of the European People's Party (Christian Democrats)
Website	www.nd.gr

Nea Dimokratia ( Greek Νέα Δημοκρατία , New Democracy ' ) is a liberal - conservative party in Greece , which was founded in 1974 by Konstantinos Karamanlis after the overthrow of the Greek military dictatorship . The ND founder Konstantinos Karamanlis is primarily credited with being the European architect of Greece. Under his government, both the association with the European Economic Community and the accession to the European Communities came about in 1981.

Political spectrum

The party unites a relatively broad political spectrum. Karamanlis, who previously belonged to the right-wing Ethniki Rizospastiki Enosis ( National Radical Union ) he founded , tried to present the party as more modern and progressive with a liberal program. It united economic liberals and social conservatives , royalists and former supporters of the Center Union . It is by far the most important conservative party in Greece. At European level it is organized in the European People's Party .

The logo

The current logo of the party (since 2018)

The original logo of the Nea Dimokratia showed their initials ΝΔ and in the middle a right hand with a burning torch. This logo was to remain for more than two decades (1974-2010), just like the colors blue and white, which form a bridge to the national colors. The right hand should represent the spectrum of the political space, which should range from the middle of society to the liberal-bourgeois to the right-wing conservative camp. Under the chairmanship of Andonis Samaras, a new logo was introduced in 2010, in which the first letters ΝΔ are based on the DIN font . There is a version of the first (1974-2010) and the second logo (2010-2017) with the full party name (instead of the initials) that was used in the election campaign. The name or the party logo was reproduced in Greece in the color blue. In 2017, the party leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis presented the party's new and updated logo. The logo was revised again and on the one hand supposedly adapted to the digital age; on the other hand, emphasis was placed on the tradition of the logo. Both components were combined in the logo. The burning torch is incorporated as well as a 3D positioning of the initials NΔ .

The party seat

The two changes in each case went hand in hand with the relocation of the party headquarters. The traditional party headquarters on Odos Rigillis ( Οδός Ρηγίλλης ) (1975-2013), a neoclassical building in the center of Athens, only two streets away from the prime minister's seat and the seat of the state president, was abandoned in 2013 and moved to a glass building in the south of Athens at the Leoforos Andrea Syngrou ( Λεωφόρος Ανδρέα Συγγρού ) (2011–2013). The reasons given at that time by the management team around chairman Samaras were the reasons for the space and the inadequate technical conditions and electronic infrastructure of the old building. When the headquarters was relocated again just a few years later and under the chairmanship of Kyriakos Mitsotakis, this also led to the party's new and current logo. The current party headquarters (since 2016) is located in the Moschato district on Pireos Street in central Athens. The building is more energy-efficient thanks to a series of energy-saving measures such as the installation of LED technology and insulation systems.

history

The founding years and first government 1974–1981

First logo of the New Democracy (1974-2010)

The party was founded on October 4, 1974, two months after Konstantinos Karamanlis was sworn in as the first prime minister after the military dictatorship . It won the first free parliamentary elections after the military rule with a result of more than 54%, which no party has achieved to date.

In the parliamentary elections in 1977 , the party won again with 41.82%, and was still the most popular party in Greece with just under 20% difference to the second party. After Karamanlis resigned in 1980, Georgios Rallis succeeded him. The inclusion of Greece in the then EEC laid the foundation for the economic upturn in the next two decades. With anti-European rhetoric and the demand to withdraw from the western alliance of NATO, the then opposition leader of the Social Democrats Andreas Papandreou led his relatively small party, which in the previous elections with 13.00% in 1974 and 25.00 % stayed in 1977, winning the 1981 election.

The years in the opposition 1981–1989

During the opposition years there was a change of power within the party, with Georgios Rallis' chairmanship being transferred to Evangelos Averoff . The inner-party currents of the more bourgeois Christian-conservative forces realigned themselves with the more economically liberal-conservative currents around Konstantinos Mitsotakis and clashed. This trial of strength ended with the election of Konstantinos Mitsotakis as chairman.

Return to power and second government 1989-1993

Prime Minister Konstantinos Mitsotakis with his wife Marika

Shaken by the Koskota scandal, the government of Andreas Papandreou was voted out of office. The Cabinet Mitsotakis took in 1989 to work.

The main task of Mitsotaki's second government is to lead the country into the newly established European internal market ( Maastricht Treaty ). Convinced of a good economic and financial policy held in a European context, in order to keep the sometimes excessive policy of spending and promises within a legal European framework and to give the country stability, Parliament voted with a large majority in favor of joining the Maastricht Treaty. The necessary privatizations in sectors such as telecommunications and power supply as well as reforms in labor and social policy met with resistance from the population, which was driven by the opposition to strikes and resistance and thus slowed down the necessary development. The dispute over the name of the neighboring state of Macedonia after the break-up of Yugoslavia and the disagreements between then Foreign Minister Samaras and the Prime Minister led to new elections, from which the party emerged as the loser. After the election in 1993, Andonis Samaras founded the new political party Politiki Anixi (German: Politischer Frühling), which was to position itself in the political spectrum on the right of the ND, with which the - ultimately unsuccessful - party occupies traditional topics of the New Democracy and thus votes from the wanted to win over the traditional camp of the People's Party.

Structural changes within the party from 1993 to 2004

After the lost parliamentary elections in 1993 (the ND achieved 39.30% of the vote at the time) Mitsotakis resigned from the office of party leader, which he later described as a "serious mistake". His successor was the previous mayor of Athens, Miltiadis Evert . Like Karamanlis, both politicians steered a pro-European course. After the electoral defeat in 1996, Evert resigned and was succeeded by the previously unknown ND MP Kostas Karamanlis . The influential political families of the Kefalogiannis from Crete and the former minister Ioannis Varvitsiotis supported this bid for the presidency . Not least because of the identical name to his uncle Konstantinos Karamanlis , he was able to advertise a continuation of the party's old successes. But initially Kostas Karamanlis was not able to achieve electoral success either, but the electoral defeat in April 2000 was extremely narrow: with 42.73% to 43.79%, the ND narrowly missed the majority, which is why the question of leadership did not arise. Since 1996 there have been several spectacular resignations, which also resulted in the founding of smaller parties such as the “Liberals” of Stefanos Manos, but the spin-offs were unsuccessful; The ND, however, never generally closed itself off against the resumption of apostates.

Third government and the bourgeois mid-2004-2009

Kostas Karamanlis as Prime Minister 2006 at the EPP Summit with Angela Merkel

After a long time in the opposition, they finally won the 2004 election and defeated the PASOK Social Democrats .

The first cabinet Karamanlis , which ruled from 2004 to 2007, took over from the government Simitis threatening the precarious financial situation of the country, which in the meantime with the introduction of the euro increased in relevance. After the elections in 2007 were won and topics such as the Annan Plan for Cyprus and the situation with the neighbor from the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia regained relevance, domestic political issues also began to move more and more into focus. The approaching economic crisis in 2008 during Kostas Karamanli's second government called for new elections. The competitor Giorgos A. Papandreou, in contrast, claimed that there was money that was just not being used properly. Papandreou's sentence: "Leftá ypárchoun" ( Λεφτά υπάρχουν , 'money is available' ) should go down in history. After Kostas Karamanlis was voted out of office, who also resigned the chairmanship of the party after the defeat, the party was reorganized.

The Bakogianni - Samaras duel and the Fourth Government 2012–2015

The party's second logo (2010-2017)

Dora Bakogianni , Foreign Minister in Karamanli's cabinet, acted as his successor . However, the party leader should be elected for the first time by all members of the party, and thus by the grassroots. Even members abroad should be able to exercise their right to vote locally. The traditionally conservative Samaras was elected by a majority and thus as chairman of the party. The more economically liberal Dora Bakogianni, who walks in the footsteps of her father, had to be satisfied with second place. Panagiotis Psomiadis went third . The old feud from 1993 seemed to have been finally shelved. Samaras led the party to an election victory in 2012 at the height of the economic crisis and formed a coalition with the social democratic PASOK and thus the Samaras cabinet began its work and negotiations with the EU , the Troika and the International Monetary Fund .

The Fifth Government and Cabinet of Kyriakos Mitsotakis (since 2019)

The Fifth Government under Kyriakos Mitsotakis began the first legislative period with an economically liberal agenda such as the reduction of taxes and the loosening of the massive bureaucracy. The lowering of the unpopular property tax or real estate tax ENFIA (ΕΝΦΙΑ) by an average of 22 percent and the reduction of the tax on corporate profits from 28 to 24 percent were carried out in 2019. The dividend tax was halved to five percent. The last capital controls from the crisis year 2015, an inheritance from the previous left government, were lifted in September 2019 by Finance Minister Christos Staikouras. On the first 10,000 euros annual income, taxation was cut from 22 to nine percent. The digitization of government offices and public life was given top priority through the creation of a ministry. This is intended to straighten out the bureaucracy and the duration of business processes as well as general civil affairs.

Reception of Prime Minister Mitsotakis in the Oval Office (January 2020)

In security policy , the experienced left-liberal minister Michalis Chrysochoidis put a man at the top who originally came from the left-liberal camp of the KIN.AL party. This was intended to curb the anarchist scene in Athens and the burgeoning crime that arose during the economic crisis and now threatened to escalate. Furthermore, the government took on the task of border protection, which also represents an external border of the EU. The first and through the Turkish side became successful Staged wave of refugees in North Evros and along the Evros border river in February and March 2020.

In terms of foreign policy, the traditionally good relations with the United States were further stabilized. The Prime Minister Mitsotakis relied on the existing relationships with the Greek-American economic forums to activate investments. Relations with China were further intensified. In the Libya conflict, the government pleaded for a ceasefire and invited opposition leader General Khalifa Haftar to hold talks in Athens.

Party leader since it was founded

Party leader of the Nea Dimokratia

	Term of office	Party leader	portrait	Years as prime minister
1.	October 4, 1974 to May 8, 1980	Konstantinos Karamanlis (Founder of the party)		1974-1980
2.	May 8, 1980 to December 1981	Georgios Rallis		1980-1981
3.	December 1981 to September 1, 1984	Evangelos Averoff		-
4th	September 1, 1984 to November 3, 1993	Konstantinos Mitsotakis		1990-1993 ( Tzanis Tzannetakis 1989)
5.	November 3, 1993 to March 21, 1997	Miltiadis Evert		-
6th	March 21, 1997 to September 30, 2009	Kostas Karamanlis		2004-2009
7th	November 30, 2009 to July 5, 2015	Andonis Samaras		2012-2015
Interim	July 5, 2015 to November 24, 2015	Vangelis Meimarakis		-
Interim	November 24, 2015 to January 11, 2016	Ioannis Plakiotakis		-
8th.	since January 11, 2016	Kyriakos Mitsotakis		Since 2019

Parliamentary elections

2004 elections

The Nea Dimokratia emerged victorious from the Greek parliamentary elections on March 7, 2004 . The top candidate of the party Kostas Karamanlis was then commissioned on March 8, 2004 by the President Konstantinos Stefanopoulos to form a new government.

2007 elections

Despite losing votes, the Nea Dimokratia was able to defend its absolute majority of seats in parliament in the parliamentary elections on September 16, 2007 . It achieved a share of the vote of 41.86% (2004: 45.4%) and thus won 152 of the 300 seats in parliament. After Prime Minister Karamanlis was accused of poor crisis management during the devastating forest fires in August 2007 before the election, higher losses for the New Democrats were expected.

Elections 2009

In the parliamentary elections on October 4, 2009 , the Nea Dimokratia lost over 8 percentage points and thus its government majority. With around 33.5 percent, it only achieved 91 seats. Karamanlis resigned from the party leadership immediately after the election. The previous Foreign Minister Dora Bakogianni , the previous Minister of Culture Andonis Samaras and the Prefect of Thessaloniki Panagiotis Psomiadis were candidates for his successor . In an election in which all party members could vote for the first time, Andonis Samaras, who between 1993 and 2004 had led his own Politiki Anixi party and overthrew the government of Nea Dimokratia, was elected as the new party chairman. Samaras refused to support Giorgos Papandreou's government during the sovereign debt crisis . His rival Dora Bakogianni was expelled from the party immediately after she voted against the party line with the Papandreou government; she founded the Dimokratiki Symmachia , but in 2014 it went up again in the Nea Dimokratia.

Participation in the Papadimos government

Loukas Papadimos

When the financial crisis worsened in November 2011, the economic situation became more and more dramatic due to the rigid austerity measures, and the resentment of the population grew, the Nea Dimokratia surpassed PASOK in the polls, which, however, showed a great loss of confidence among the population in both major parties. Under strong domestic and foreign pressure, Papandreou had to resign, but Samaras, contrary to the strict refusal of the ND to participate in a transitional government and participation in new ones from the "Troika" of the EU, IMF and ECB, made Samaras a prerequisite for further loan assistance agree to drastic reform and austerity measures. He made early new elections a condition and tried to portray participation in the government of Loukas Papadimos as insignificant; No parliamentarians were sent to the Papadimo government to represent the ND; the two deputy party chairmen Stavros Dimas and Dimitris Avramopoulos received important portfolios with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Defense. Apart from them, however, the ND only sent a few vice ministers and state secretaries to the cabinet.

In the votes on the austerity and reform measures demanded by the “Troika”, the trio of European Commission ( EU Commission ), European Central Bank (ECB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF), numerous government representatives refused to follow suit and left the party locked out. The size of the parliamentary group of the ND fell from the original 91 to 62 members.

Elections 2012

Antonis Samaras

In the parliamentary elections on May 6, 2012 , the Nea Dimokratia received only 18.85% and thus 108 seats, which was seen as a reminder of the voters for the austerity and reform measures. However, this made it the strongest party again, even though it lost more than 60% of its voters compared to the 2007 election , in which it still received almost three million votes.

Since this election did not result in a governable majority, parliamentary elections were held again on June 17th . From these, the Nea Dimokratia emerged again as the strongest party, where it was able to increase its share of the vote to 29.66% and achieved 129 seats.

After Nea Dimokratia and PASOK reached an agreement with the Democratic Left to form a government, Andonis Samaras was sworn in as Greek Prime Minister on June 20, 2012. The government consisted of representatives of the Nea Dimokratia and technocrats. The two smaller coalition partners did not send party members to the cabinet. In June 2013, the Democratic Left left the coalition; the government was restructured and PASOK chairman Evangelos Venizelos and other representatives of his party were given cabinet posts.

Elections 2015

Evangelos Meimarakis

The new election in January 2015 led to a defeat and loss of power for the ND. After Andonis Samaras resigned on July 5, 2015 as a result of the "no" victory in the referendum , Vangelis Meimarakis temporarily took over the party chairmanship. On July 24, 2015, he was unanimously confirmed as chairman by the board of the Nea Dimokratia, expressly also with regard to a possible early election of the parliament . In spring 2016 at the latest, however, as was the case most recently with the election of Samaras in 2009, the party constitution stipulated that a new party leader should be elected by the party base.

In the new election in September 2015 , in which Nea Dimokratia went with Meimarakis as the top candidate, contrary to the forecasts, she could hardly increase her share of the vote and remained in the opposition. Meimarakis ran for the election of the party leader by the party base and supporters of the party. which should initially take place on November 22, 2015, but failed due to a computer breakdown and had to be postponed. In the runoff election between Meimarakis and Mitsotakis, Mitsotakis emerged as the winner on January 10, 2016.

Elections 2019

The new election in July 2019 led to an election victory with 39.85% and the fifth government. Kyriakos Mitsotakis became prime minister with a focus on internal security, lowering taxes to stimulate the economy.

Results of parliamentary elections

year	Percent%	Seats	be right	Party leader
1974	54.37	220	2,669,133	Konstantinos Karamanlis
1977	41.84	171	2,146,365	Konstantinos Karamanlis
1981	35.87	115	2,034,496	Georgios Rallis
1985	40.84	126	2,599,681	Konstantinos Mitsotakis
1989 (June)	44.28	145	2,887,488	Konstantinos Mitsotakis
1989 (November)	46.19	148	3,093,479	Konstantinos Mitsotakis
1990	46.89	150	3,088,137	Konstantinos Mitsotakis
1993	39.30	111	2,711,737	Konstantinos Mitsotakis
1996	38.12	108	2,586,089	Miltiadis Evert
2000	42.73	125	2,934,948	Kostas Karamanlis
2004	45.36	165	3,360,424	Kostas Karamanlis
2007	41.84	152	2,994,979	Kostas Karamanlis
2009	33.49	91	2,283,562	Kostas Karamanlis
2012 (May)	18.85	108	1,192,054	Andonis Samaras
2012 (June)	29.66	129	1,825,609	Andonis Samaras
2015 (January)	27.81	76	1,718,815	Andonis Samaras
2015 (September)	28.10	75	1,526,205	Evangelos Meimarakis
2019	39.85	158	2,251,411	Kyriakos Mitsotakis
Swell: Hellenic Parliament (elections 1974-2009) Hellenic Ministry of the Interior (elections 2012 (May)) Hellenic Ministry of the Interior (elections 2012 (June)) Hellenic Ministry of the Interior (elections 2015 (January)) Hellenic Ministry of the Interior (election 2015 (September))

See also

• ONNE.D. - The youth organization of the Nea Dimokratia
• Political parties in Greece

Web links

• Homepage of the ND (Greek)
• Homepage of ONNE.D - youth organization of the ND (Greek)

Individual evidence

1. ^ José María Magone: The Politics of Southern Europe: Integration Into the European Union . Greenwood Publishing Group, 2003, ISBN 978-0-275-97787-0 , pp. 148 ( Google Books ).
2. ↑ Markus Bernath: Greek conservatives believe in victory. Der Standart, September 4, 2015, accessed on September 12, 2018 . 
3. ↑ Βίκυ Σαμαρά: Μέσα στα νέα γραφεία της Νέας Δημοκρατίας. August 18, 2016, accessed December 9, 2018 (Greek). 
4. ↑ Website of the party: Γραφείο Τύπου | Νέα Δημοκρατία. Retrieved December 9, 2018 (Greek). 
5. ↑ ΝΔ: Από τη Ρηγίλλης στη Συγγρού και τώρα στο Μοσχάτο. August 3, 2016, accessed December 9, 2018 (Greek). 
6. ↑ Christos Katsioulis: "We will send monsters to Europe" Greece's party system before the election. In: Frankfurter Hefte. 2014, accessed December 9, 2018 . 
7. ↑ Adventurers and crooks. In: Spiegel Online. February 13, 1989. Retrieved December 9, 2018 . 
8. ↑ Μάκης Θεοδώσης: Ο Γιώργος Παπανδρέου σε δίκη για το «λεφτά υπάρχουν». January 11, 2017, accessed December 9, 2018 (Greek). 
9. ↑ Gerd Höhler: What Mitsotakis has achieved so far - and what the Greek Prime Minister has to tackle in 2020. December 31, 2019, accessed March 29, 2020 . 
10. ^ Christiane Schlötzer: Why Greece courted rebel leader Haftar. January 17, 2020, accessed March 29, 2020 . 
11. ↑ Ta Nea online from November 30, 2009 ( Memento from December 3, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
12. ↑ Official result of the parliamentary election in June 2012 ( memento of the original from June 19, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Greek Ministry of the Interior (Greek, English) 
13. ↑ Samaras is the new Prime Minister of Greece. - He wants to lead a cabinet made up of conservatives and technocrats - his coalition partners do not provide ministers. zeit.de from June 20, 2012 (accessed June 22, 2012)
14. ↑ Kathimerini: Meimarakis stays until spring (Greek)
15. ↑ Greece newspaper of September 30, 2015
16. ^ Spiegel Online
17. ^ Christiane Schlötzer: Conservatives win in Greece. Süddeutsche Zeitung, July 8, 2019, accessed on September 8, 2019 . 
18. ↑ Election results 1974–2009, Greek Parliament (English)
19. ↑ Official election result 2012, Greek Ministry of the Interior (Greek / English)
20. ↑ Official election result 2012, Greek Ministry of the Interior ( Memento of the original from June 19, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (greek / english) 
21. ↑ Official election result January 2015, Greek Ministry of the Interior (Greek / English)
22. ↑ Official election result September 2015, Greek Ministry of the Interior (Greek / English)