Special: Elections 96

NEW DEMOCRACY

Headquarters:	1 Rigillis St., Athens, tel. +01 7290071
	37 Pavlou Mela St., Thessaloniki, tel. +031 241508

ON FOREIGN AND SECURITY POLICY

Brief History
New Democracy was formed on 1st October 1974 by Constantinos Karamanlis with main objective "the unbinding function of Greece's regime". The party's ideological base is described as "radical liberalism".

In 1977 it held its first congress with a central management, local and prefectural committees while it organised a youth department the Youth's Organisation of New Democracy (ONNED) and an student department.

The party has won the elections in 1974 and 1977 while it lost the elections of 1981, 1985.It won the elections of the 18th June and the 5th November 1989 and the elections of April 1990. In the last elections of 1993 it was defeated by PASOK.

ND: Percentages in general elections 1974-1993

Leadership
Current leader of New Democracy is Miltiades Evert who took over its leadership on the 3rd November 1993 beating with Ioannis Varvitsiotis who since then is the vice-president of the party. Mr. Stavros Dimas was appointed as the Secretary General of the party's Parliamentary Group.

Apart from its founder Constantinos Karamanlis, the previous leaders of New Democracy were Georgios Rallis from 1980 to 1981, Evaggelos Averov from 1981 to 1984 and Constantinos Mitsotakis from 1984 to 1993.

Organising Structure
The party's structures is divided to Central, Regional and Local. The Central organisation involves the Executive Committee, the Central Committee and the Parliamentary Group.

The supreme directing body of New Democracy is the General Assembly (convention) which is composed by the active and the former MPs of the party, the candidates for parliament, the representatives of the regional organisations of the party as well as the representatives of the Youth.

The Executive Committee consists of 130 members and it is in charge of determining the political directives of the party.

There is also the Political Council which is pure advisory body and consists of the former Prime Ministers and presidents of the party. The regional structure is composed according to the electoral districts. The local structure consists of the organisations of the plain members of New Democracy in a local level.