In the elections of October 1993, PASOK came back to power obtaining 47% and thus rehabilitating the wounded image and credibility of the party, but also of its leader. The new government gave special emphasis to dealing with the fiscal problem. It abandoned its pre-election promises and continued the austerity policy of its predecessors. Furthermore, it moved towards the vision of European unification, as this had taken shape after the Maastricht Treaty (1992). A. Papandreou’s fragile health forced him to retire from politics, since he was unable to exercise his duties. Konstantinos Simitis succeeded him as the leader of PASOK and after confrontations inside the party, he became the leader of the party in the national elections of September 1996.

His election announced changes and restructures both in governmental policy and in the staffing of administration by new people. The prevalence of the ‘political modernization’ wing in PASOK was associated with a new programme that stressed the request of renewal and rationalization of the Greek society. The strategic choices that were made now opposed to fixed clientele interconnections but also to ‘populistic’ methods of the past. Since the middle of the decade, the consent- albeit factitious - of the two biggest parties as to the pattern of development and the integration of the country in the globalized economic system, led to disagreements mostly concerning the form and conditions of administration. However, fundamental choices (privatizations, market economy etc.) were not called into question.

It is characteristic that PASOK seemed to have undermined the social basis of the conservative wing winning over a large part of the rising middle strata, while ND accessed to sections of the salaried class and farmers. This tendency was confirmed in the elections of April 2000, in which PASOK was elected government with the marginal difference of 43,8% against 42,8% of ND.