[1] Meimarakis was appointed chairman of the ONNED Executive Committee in 1984, and led the organisation to its 1st Conference in March 1987.

In March 2001, at New Democracy's 5th Conference, he was elected as Secretary of the Central Committee, the first person to hold this role.

He was reelected as Secretary in July 2004, and remained in this role until 15 February 2006, when he was appointed as the Minister for National Defense in the First Cabinet of Kostas Karamanlis.

[3] In this capacity he led the party into the snap election on 20 September 2015, at which New Democracy were defeated for a second time in nine months by SYRIZA.

[7] Within the centre-right European People's Party Group (EPP), Meimarakis is one of the deputies of chairman Manfred Weber.

[2] Meimarakis is seen as down-to-earth, with Vassilis Monastiriotis of the London School of Economics commenting that he appeals to: "a broad cross-section: both working-class voters, who see him as a man of the people, and the traditional higher-income New Democracy supporters, who see him as a cunning operator able to hit Tsipras below the belt".