ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) and seeks to trace the origin and the content of its preferences on European integration since its establishment in 1974. It challenges the established view that – couched as it is in PASOK’s rhetoric in the immediate post-1974 era – construes PASOK as an initially instinctively anti-European political party that subsequently performed a policy U-turn, a true political transformation by turning from a vocal anti-EEC stance to a pro-European (even federalist) attitude (Tsardanidis 1998, 295, 299, 300; Kazakos 1994, 5; Verney 1987, 259-60, 263; Featherstone 1988, 178; Couloumbis 1993, 126; Featherstone 1994, 158-9). It also takes issue with more nuanced accounts that refer to a ‘subtle metamorphosis’ of PASOK’s stance since 1977, resulting from the exigencies of PASOK’s political competition strategy – as well as shifts in public opinion and a ‘pragmatic adjustment’ to the requirements of governing Greece (Verney 1994, 347-9; Loulis 1984, 379; Coufoudakis 1987, 238-40). The chapter advances four claims.
