Poland’s main ruling party changes name and merges with junior partners

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Prime Minister Donald Tusk has announced that the centrist party he leads, Civic Platform (PO), is changing its name to Civic Coalition (KO) and merging with two small groups, Modern (Nowoczesna) and Polish Initiative (iPL), with which it has already long been allied.

The other parties that are part of Tusk’s government – the Polish People’s Party (PSL), Poland 2050 (Polska 2050) and The Left (Lewica) – are unaffected by the change.

The decision marks the end of Civic Platform, which was founded in 2001 and has consistently been one of Poland’s main parties ever since then, including leading governments from 2007 to 2015 and from 2023 to today.

However, since 2018, PO has stood jointly in elections with the much smaller Modern and iPL as part of an alliance called Civic Coalition. Now the three of them have merged into a single party bearing the KO name and the white-and-red heart logo they used at the 2023 parliamentary elections.

“From today, we are called Civic Coalition,” declared Tusk at a convention in Warsaw. “Because as Civic Coalition we won the [2023] elections, and we will win the next ones…There is no more important lesson from Poland’s history than this one: that good people – if they are united – are unbeatable.”

Tusk added, however, that this decision “is not just about the fight for power, about future elections, it is about absolutely fundamental things: will Poland be a sovereign state? Will Poles maintain the freedom won in 1989?”

“That is why I asked for us to organise this day of unity on the day when our political opponents are pondering how to once again plunder Poland,” he continued, referring to the main opposition party, and PO’s longstanding rival, the national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS), which is also holding a convention this weekend.

In a speech on Friday, PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński warned, as he has repeatedly in the past, that “Germans want to take our state away” and are using the European Union to “create a new kind of empire”.

Speaking on Saturday, Tusk warned that allowing PiS to return to power would see Poland follow a “Russian model” and “separate us from Europe and the West”.

The leader of Nowoczesna, Adam Szłapka, who also serves as government spokesman, likewise said at today’s KO convention that the formation of their new, united party was needed in order to stop PiS from “destroying what we have built over these years”.

The leader of iPL, education minister Barbara Nowacka, said that her group had agreed to merge with Tusk’s because “we know that, if we want to be successful, we have to be in the Civic Coalition, because this is where the heart of democratic Poland beats”.

Kaczyński, however, mocked today’s announcement by Tusk and his partners as a PR stunt intended to boost their polling numbers.

“Law and Justice wants to change Poland for the better, to improve the living conditions of Poles, and Civic Platform is changing its name in order to improve its poll numbers for propaganda purposes,” he wrote. “We’re talking about Poland, they’re talking about themselves.”

But the decision by PO, iPL and Modern to merge was welcomed by Włodzimierz Czarzasty, one of the leaders of The Left, which has been in government with Tusk since 2023.

“All decisions that lead to consolidation and cooperation are better than decisions that cause arguments and divisions,” Czarzasty told the Polish Press Agency (PAP). However, he added that, in practice, the move “will not, I think, change anything, because they already work very closely together”.

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Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.