Ideology
The Panhellenic Socialist Movement is a social democratic party, member of the Socialist International, the Party of European Socialists and the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats.
During Andreas Papandreou's leadership, wages were substantially boosted and capital gains were progressively taxed. At the very beginning, the members and the leadership of the Party, were very critical of NATO and the European Economic Community, but this attitude was soon abandoned and the Greek participation in EEC was enforced. Andreas Papandreou wished to create a world where wealth and power would be shared by more countries than just the United States.
After Andreas Papandreou's death, Costas Simitis was elected as President of the PA.SO.K. which represented the centre-left and centrist factions of the Movement and he moved to modernize the Party, making it purely social democratic . Tight fiscal policies, privatization of state enterprises and a broadening of the tax base (by shifting the tax burden to the lower quintiles) were implemented. As a result of these policies, the Party was defeated at the polls in the election of 2004. The strictly neoliberal New Democracy policies adopted by the new government, forced the PA.SO.K. to turn left under the promising leadership of George Papandreou. Five years later, the Party triumphed in 2009 elections.
After the 2009 electoral sweep, expectations ran high. However, it very quickly emerged that the deficit that had run up in the years leading to 2010 was of an enormous, unmanageable scope. Greece was faced with imminent insolvency – would be unable to either make current debt payments or borrow to fund government obligations unless it received urgent large loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Central Bank (ECB). In exchange for further loans, the European Union required neoliberal austerity policies. Such austerity measures included further privatization of state enterprises, further salary cuts, and heavier taxation of working and middle class citizens.
However necessary to maintain solvency, the Party's minor swift from of its original absolutely Social and Democratic principles and ideas and the resulting economic disintegration, disenchanted many Party members. The social disruption flowing from the austerity policies sparked major demonstrations against the government, with the participation of more populist factions of the Party itself. Though restructuring of private bonds and new support from the (IMF) and the (ECB), were secured as a result of the austerity, in the May 2012 elections that followed, the Party placed third .
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