Unia Wolności
| Freedom union | |
| Unia Wolności | |
| abbreviation | UW |
| founding | April 23, 1994 |
| resolution | May 9, 2005 |
| Headquarters | ul. Nowogrodzka 4 00-513 Warsaw |
| Alignment | liberalism |
| European party | formerly ALDE |
| Website | uw.org.pl |
The Unia Wolności (German Freedom Union , UW ) was a liberal political party in Poland . It was founded in April 1994 by members of the united Democratic Union (UD) and the Liberal Democratic Congress (KLD), and in 2005 it was transformed into the Partia Demokratieyczna - demokraci.pl .
Alignment
The UW occupied a position in the middle of the political spectrum in Poland. It was strongly pro-European . In economic policy she was clearly in favor of market economy principles, in socio-political and ideological questions she was more conservative, for example she was in favor of a ban on abortions. Within the party there were different wings that can be described as Christian Democratic , liberal-conservative and left-wing liberal . The most important were the Christian-oriented “ethos wing”, for which Jacek Kuroń and Bronisław Geremek stood, and the neoliberal wing, which was largely represented by Donald Tusk and Leszek Balcerowicz . The party also suffered multiple splits, both to the right and to the left. In 1996 the UW joined the predominantly Christian Democratic European People's Party (EPP) at European level , and at global level it joined the Christian Democratic International (CDI). After the Platforma Obywatelska split off and the UW left the Sejm, it switched to the European Liberal Democratic and Reform Party (ELDR).
Party history
In 1994 the Democratic Union (UD) and the Liberal Democratic Congress (KLD) became part of the newly founded Unia Wolności (UW). Both predecessor parties emerged from the Christian-liberal wing of the Solidarność movement. Previously, in the parliamentary elections in September 1993, the UD had won 10.6% of the vote and 74 seats in the Sejm, while the KLD had left parliament with 4%. The previous UD chairman and former prime minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki became the first chairman of the united party. Donald Tusk , who came from the KLD, was his deputy . Mazowiecki stood for Christian-democratic values (but far from religious fundamentalism ), but was criticized by the left wing of the party around Władysław Frasyniuk and Zofia Kuratowska . The UW was initially the most important opposition party against the coalition government made up of the post-communist SLD and the peasant party PSL .
In 1995 Leszek Balcerowicz was elected as the new party leader, who was finance minister in the first non-communist governments and was responsible for the “ shock therapy ” of radical market reforms (the so-called Balcerowicz Plan ). In 1995 , the party nominated Jacek Kuroń, a well-known opposition activist from the 1970s and 1980s, as well as labor minister in the Mazowiecki and Hanna Suchocka governments as a presidential candidate, who , however, scored poorly with only 9.22% of the vote. The reason for the low score was that Kuroń was not accepted by the party's liberal electorate and was mainly supported by the sympathizers of the social democratic SLD and the left-wing Unia Pracy .
Until 1997 the party remained in opposition to the post-communist and social-democratic governments under Waldemar Pawlak , Józef Oleksy and Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz . The UW strongly criticized the encrustation of the political institutions and the widespread corruption and advocated the continuation of economic and social reforms. Despite strong criticism of the SLD and the peasant PSL, the party took part in the adoption of the new Polish constitution in 1997, together with these parties.
After the parliamentary elections in September 1997 , in which the AWS , formed from parties of the post-Solidarność spectrum, won, the UW entered the center-right government under Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek as a junior partner . The party chairman Leszek Balcerowicz achieved the highest level of public awareness because, as finance minister, he was responsible for the liberalization of the Polish economy . The so-called “second Balcerowicz plan” was proposed, but was met with skepticism from the conservative coalition partner.
The Buzek government also included a. Bronisław Geremek (Foreign Minister), the former Prime Minister Hanna Suchocka (Justice Minister) and Janusz Onyszkiewicz (Defense Minister) for the UW. Due to the social hardship that the economic reforms brought with it, both Balcerowicz and political liberalism in Poland increasingly lost their popularity.
Because of various misunderstandings in financial policy and government conflicts, some liberal ministers of the UW resigned from the government in June 2001 and the coalition collapsed. The Buzek minority government enjoyed the support of the UW in the Sejm until autumn 2001 when it came to important bills .
After the success of the independent liberal candidate Andrzej Olechowski in the presidential elections in autumn 2000 (19% support for a non-party candidate) and the assumption of party chairmanship by the more left-wing liberal Bronisław Geremek, more and more leading politicians left (such as the later Prime Minister Donald Tusk or Janusz Lewandowski ) the party and founded a rival party, the Platforma Obywatelska (Polish Platforma Obywatelska , PO), which wanted to get closer to the conservatives and to orientate itself on Christian values. The merger of the UD and KLD was practically canceled again: the politicians who came from the KLD mostly switched to the PO, while the former UD members stayed in the UW.
After the election debacle of the AWS in September 2001 , the UW no longer received a mandate for the Sejm and was only represented in the Polish Senate - through its participation in the "Bloc 2001" of the post-Solidarność parties - with five members. In 2002 she left the European People's Party and turned to international liberal organizations. The founding chairman Tadeusz Mazowiecki, who pursued a more church-friendly line and consciously referred to Christian values, did not want to follow this break with Christian democracy and left the UW.
In 2002, the party then lost the local elections significantly. In Poland she fell so in a political insignificance, although they in the 2004 European elections surprisingly again the five-percent hurdle could skip and four deputies in the European Parliament moved in that the fraction ALDE joined. Until 2008, one of the MPs was Bronisław Geremek, who was awarded the Charlemagne Prize in 1998 .
In 2005 the Unia Wolności was transformed into Partia Demokratieyczna - demokraci.pl (German Democratic Party ).
Party leader
- 1994-1995: Tadeusz Mazowiecki
- 1995-2000: Leszek Balcerowicz
- 2000–2001: Bronislaw Geremek
- 2001–2005: Władysław Frasyniuk
Election results in elections to the Sejm
Election results in the presidential election
- 1995 : Jacek Kuroń - 9.22%
Election results in elections to the European Parliament
- 2004 : 7.33%
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ uw.org.pl ( Memento from March 15, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Klaus Ziemer : The political system of Poland. An introduction. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2013, p. 193.
- ^ A b c d Ziemer: The political system of Poland. 2013, p. 200.
- ^ A b c Cäcilie Schildberg: Political Identity and Social Europe. Party conceptions and citizen attitudes in Germany, Great Britain and Poland. VS Verlag, Wiesbaden 2010, 285–286.
- ↑ Tim Bale, Aleks Szczerbiak: Why is there no Christian Democracy in Poland (and why does this matter)? Sussex European Institute Working Paper No. 91, University of Sussex, Brighton 2006, p. 36.