Interior. Upon entering government, he had to deal with the ETA's kidnapping of José Antonio Ortega Lara. In 1998, ETA declared a ceasefire. Mayor Oreja took a hawkish stance, denouncing the ceasefire as false truce. He famously coined the term "tregua-trampa", or "trap truce", and he publicly stated his refusal to engage in any political negotiation with ETA. His hard stance against ETA's terrorism earned him over much praise amongst Spanish conservatives. 2001 Basque candidacy and MEP His tenure as Minister of the Interior marked Mayor Oreja's height of influence, and thereafter his political career experienced an irregular decline. In 2001, his party chose him as candidate to the Basque regional presidency in that year's election, so he resigned as Minister of the Interior to focus on running the campaign. The 2001 Basque elections took place in the aftermath of the collapse of ETA's 1998 ceasefire. Mayor Oreja ran on an aggressive ticket, defending the Spanish Constitution and the Statute of Gernika as the main framework to defeat ETA, and vigorously attacked the incumbent Basque Nationalist Party because Mayor Oreja alleged they were complicit with terrorism. Although his ticket never polled high enough to secure a plurality of seats in the Basque parliament, Mayor Oreja and the Spanish Socialist Party made it clear that were the incumbent lehendakari Juan José Ibarretxe to fail to secure an absolute majority in the Basque parliament, Mayor Oreja would form a minority government instead with the Socialist's support. Albeit Mayor Oreja improved his party's results and attained 22.9% of the votes, this proved insufficient to unseat Ibarretxe, who obtained 42.4% of the votes with a 6.2% swing in his favour. As a result, Mayor Oreja failed to become lehendakari, and Ibarretxe was re-elected. He remained leader of the opposition in the Basque country until 2004. During this time, he developed a reputation as an absentee parliamentarian, particularly after missing a key vote in 2002 that enabled the Ibarretxe government to pass its budget by just one vote (Mayor Oreja's). In 2004 he was mentioned as a potential successor to the outgoing Spanish prime minister José María Aznar, but the latter finally opted for Mariano Rajoy instead. Shortly afterwards, Mayor Oreja quit his seat in the Basque parliament and ran for MEP in that year's European parliament elections, where he secured a seat. For the next ten years, he occupied several senior positions in the