A close collaborator of Constantine Karamanlis, he retained the position under the first Karamanlis cabinet (6 October 1955 – 29 February 1956), and went on to serve as Minister for Transport and Public Works in the 1956–58 Karamanlis cabinet, and as Minister for the Interior in the 1961–1963 Karamanlis cabinet. He was also among the founding members of the National Radical Union (ERE) in 1956. In 1958, he quarrelled with Karamanlis over the latter's adoption of a new electoral law, on which he had not been consulted, and for a few years left ERE, before returning to the fold in 1961.