Editing Costas Simitis (section)

=== Rise to the offices of Prime Minister and President of PASOK ===
On 16 January 1996, Papandreou resigned as Prime Minister due to ill health. In a special election held by the party's parliamentary group on 18 January, Simitis was elected in his place over the candidacies of [[Akis Tsochatzopoulos]], [[Gerasimos Arsenis]] and [[Ioannis Charalambopoulos]]. Papandreou, however, remained Chairman of the party for the next months until his death on 23 June (also Simitis' 60th birthday), just before a party conference would select the party's vice-president; after Papandreou's death, the conference would elect the new Party President. Simitis was elected in PASOK's Fourth Congress on 30 June, defeating Akis Tsochatzopoulos on a platform of support for the [[European Union]].

Simitis then led the party in the [[1996 Greek legislative election|national elections]] of 22 September 1996, gaining a mandate in his own right. He also narrowly won the [[2000 Greek legislative election|national election of 2000]]. He worked very closely and had a good relationship with his [[Cabinet Secretary]] of eight years, [[Sokratis Kosmidis]]. Although he is widely respected throughout Europe,{{citation needed|date=December 2020}} in Greece, Simitis was regarded by some Greeks as a rather dull technocrat, lacking the charisma of Papandreou.

On 7 January 2004, with PASOK's popularity collapsing, Simitis announced that he would resign as party president and would not stand for re-election as Prime Minister in the [[2004 Greek legislative election|forthcoming legislative elections]]. At the time, he was accused of bowing out to avoid humiliation at the polls. However, by the end of his tenure on 10 March, he would be in office for over eight consecutive years, the longest continuous term in modern Greek history. In a past interview, Simitis had already stated that he would remain prime minister for only two legislative periods since "he wanted to do other things in his life as well." On 8 January, he called elections for the party president to be held on 8 February. Simitis was succeeded as PASOK leader by the then-Minister of Foreign Affairs [[George Andreas Papandreou|George Papandreou]], the only candidate in these elections. Despite Papandreou's personal popularity, PASOK lost the [[2004 Greek legislative election|7 March elections]] to the conservative [[New Democracy (Greece)|New Democracy]] party, whose leader [[Kostas Karamanlis]] succeeded Simitis in the office of Prime Minister.