If we have managed to survive as an entity, we owe this partly to our deep attachment to certain institutions and certain values regarded as the norm… - Tadeusz Mazowiecki

Our country is confronted with the enormous task of reconstituting the rights and the institutions that characterise modern democracies and rebuilding a market economy, after an interruption of several decades. Added to this, there is the need to overcome enormous economic problems. We not only have to re-create rights and institutions but, in cases where they were non-existent, we have to start from scratch. Otherwise, our two European worlds will never manage to live in harmony.

We want to live in a country with a sound economy, one where it is profitable to work and to save money, and where meeting our basic material needs entails no anguish or humiliation. We want a Poland that is open to Europe and to the world; a Poland which, with no inferiority complex, contributes to the creation of material and cultural goods; a Poland whose citizens will feel they are welcome guests in the other countries of Europe and the world, and are not deemed troublemaking intruders.

We, as a people, must surmount the sense of hopelessness and confront the challenge of the moment - namely, the tasks of extricating ourselves from economic disaster and reconstructing our state.