Partia Centrum is a centrist, moderately conservative political party in Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

. Established on 3 April 2004, its founding declaration proclaimed a "necessity to take immediate steps towards repairing the state and to radically change the style of politics." The party's platform can be described as centrist with evident references to the tradition of Solidarity and Catholic social teaching

Catholic social teaching

Catholic social teaching is a body of doctrine developed by the Catholic Church on matters of poverty and wealth, economics, social organization and the role of the state...

.

The party's founding members and leadership are mostly from the ranks of the defunct party Solidarity Electoral Action

Solidarity Electoral Action

Solidarity Electoral Action was a political party coalition in Poland. Since 1997 its official name has been Akcja Wyborcza Solidarność Prawicy or Solidarity Electoral Action of the Right...

 (AWS), which held the government between 1997 and 2001, and other conservative to centrist groups, with some coming from he more liberal Freedom Union

Freedom Union (Poland)

The Freedom Union was a liberal democratic party in Poland. It was founded on March 20, 1994 out of the merger of the Democratic Union and the Liberal Democratic Congress . Both of these parties had roots in the Solidarity trade union movement. It represented European democratic and liberal...

 (UW).

Although nominally led by Janusz Steinhoff, formerly minister of economic affairs in the government of Jerzy Buzek

Jerzy Buzek

Jerzy Karol Buzek is a Polish engineer, academic lecturer and politician who was the ninth post-Cold War Prime Minister of Poland from 1997 to 2001...

, the main figurehead of the party is its honorary chairman and presidential candidate, senator Zbigniew Religa

Zbigniew Religa

Zbigniew Eugeniusz Religa was a prominent cardiac surgeon and politician.- Career as physician :Religa finished his studies at the Medical University of Warsaw in 1963. From 1966 to 1980 he worked in the Szpital Wolski in Warsaw, where he qualified in surgery...

. Religa was leading in opinion polls until July but he withdrew in September 2 and asked his supporters to vote for the liberal Donald Tusk

Donald Tusk

Donald Franciszek Tusk is a Polish politician who has been Prime Minister of Poland since 2007. He was a co-founder and is chairman of the Civic Platform party....

, his party has not entered the Sejm

Sejm

The Sejm is the lower house of the Polish parliament. The Sejm is made up of 460 deputies, or Poseł in Polish . It is elected by universal ballot and is presided over by a speaker called the Marshal of the Sejm ....

 in the 2005 early elections

Polish parliamentary election, 2005

Parliamentary elections for both houses of the Parliament of Poland were held on September 25, 2005. Thirty million voters were eligible to vote for all 460 members of the lower house, the Assembly of the Republic of Poland , and all 100 members of the upper house, the Senate of the Republic of...

with poll results never exceeding 5%.