The Centre
The Centre originated from the Liberals, led by Eleftherios Venizelos, who embarked on a project of Greece’s modernization in the early twentieth century and the interwar period. After 1945, parties of the Centre were pressed in between the resurgent royalist Right and the communist Left, but in the 1960s, under George Papandreou’s ‘Center Union’, took centre stage in Greek politics. Since the 1974 transition to democracy, the Centre supported Europeanism and social democracy, but was overshadowed by the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK). The new Centre of the twenty-first century emerged in the form of various, relatively small and short-lived parties, such as ‘To Potami’ (the River party). It was a progressive ‘bourgeois’ force, reminiscent of its liberal legacy, which aspired to relieve the Greek economy from statism and support Greece’s anchoring on the eurozone. Its political profile was constructed in opposition to SYRIZA, the radical Left party claiming to have inherited the once PASOK-dominated Centre-Left. Overall, the Centre is a political space in the making and consists of politicians who may attract the vote of segments of the middle classes earning incomes above the median line and possessing skills suitable for a globalized economy.