Our country is confronted with the enormous task of reconstituting the rights and the institutions that characterise modern democracies and rebuildin… - Tadeusz Mazowiecki

We reject a political philosophy asserting that economic reforms can be launched over and against society, above people's heads - one that pushes democratic change aside.

The Polish people are acutely aware of belonging to Europe and the European heritage. They are as conscious of this as are the other European peoples situated at the cultural crossroads adjacent to the superpowers, experiencing alternating phases of political existence and non-existence and hence feeling the need to strengthen their identity. In all these situations, Europe has always remained a beacon, an object of affection which the Poles felt ready to defend.

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 in Europe. We owe it to religion and the Church, our attachment to democracy and pluralism, human rights and civil liberties and to the ideal of solidarity.