Kostas Karamanlis

However, he asked for mid-term general elections in 2009, as his party enjoyed a narrow parliamentary majority that could not guarantee a stable government needed to handle the Greek financial crisis.

Eventually, Karamanlis was defeated and resigned as president of New Democracy after twelve years as the party's leader, being active in politics though as a member of the parliament.

Kostas Karamanlis, a nephew of former Greek President Konstantinos Karamanlis, was born in Athens and studied at University of Athens Law School and at the private Deree College, continuing with postgraduate studies in the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University (Boston) in the United States, where he gained a master's degree and a doctorate in political sciences, international relations and diplomatic history.

Aided by the unpopularity of the incumbent PASOK government led by Costas Simitis (a party that had been in power between 1981 and 1989 and from 1993 to 2004) ND defeated the Socialists' George Andreas Papandreou in 2004.

The New Democracy government under Karamanlis, elected on April of that year, decided to conduct a Financial Audit of the Greek economy, before sending revised data to Eurostat.

PASOK contested the accusations and claimed that 2006 Eurostat changes to the system of defense expenditure calculation[6] legitimized the practices of the Costas Simitis government.

In the spring of 2006, the Ministry of Education repealed a law continuously in effect from 1936 (including 20 years of socialist rule), which required approval by the local Orthodox Christian Metropolitan for the building of non-Orthodox houses of worship.

Attempted changes in Greek higher education have encountered fierce opposition from the other parties, as well as from the majority of the academic community, both professors and students.

The semester's exam period was lost and postponed until the fall, while the government shelved the changes and claimed that no bill would be put to a parliamentary vote before a more extensive dialogue had been held with students.

In the 2007 general election, Karamanlis was re-elected with a diminished majority, following the 2007 Greek forest fires that ravaged much of western Peloponnese and southern Euboea.

In the days following the fires and the seeming lack of a substantial fire-fighting response adequate to stop the blazes, the government suggested the process was not natural and the work of arsonists.

The governments of Greece, Pakistan, and Britain have denied accusations that they were involved in the alleged detention of 28 Pakistanis for several days in Athens and Ioannina after the 7 July bombings in London.

The prosecutor assigned to the case said he had no evidence of who committed the abductions, but the main opposition party PASOK called for the resignation of Greek public order minister Georgios Voulgarakis.

[16][17][18][19] A number of serious scandals involving Karamanlis' closest ministers and members of his party surfaced during his term, damaging his public image severely.

One officer was charged, and Reuters noted that "Greece has a tradition of violence at student rallies and fire bomb attacks by anarchist groups."

Kostas Karamanlis giving a speech in Warsaw in 2009
José Manuel Barroso and Kostas Karamanlis in Dublin in 2004
Kostas Karamanlis with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2006