Brussels, 11/01/2006 (Agence Europe) - The press service of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) has published the French translation of a joint declaration by eight MEPs published on 18 December last in Gazeta Wyborcza on the political situation in Poland after the legislative and presidential elections in 2005, and on the country's future role in the EU. These eight MEPs all belong to political parties that are today in the opposition: four members of the Democrat party (DP) belonging to ALDE (former Foreign Minister Bronislaw Geremek, the former ambassador to the EU and negotiator for EU membership, Jan Kulakowski, as well as Janusz Onyszkiewicz and Grzyna Staniszewska and four members of the Polish Social Democrat Party belonging to the Party of European Socialists (PES): former Foreign Minister Dariusz Rosati, Genowefa Grabowska, Jozef Pinior and Lidia Geringer de Oedenberg. MEPs, who criticise the “populist tendencies” that appeared during the Polish electoral campaign in 2005, above all warn the new prime minister, Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, and the new president, Lech Kaczynski, against fundamental change in Poland's European policy. They assert that the primordial significance of the European Union in Polish political strategy should in no way be reduced as no other international institution would be able to replace it. In their view, Polish foreign policy must be in line with EU principles and it is incomprehensible, they say, that the party in power (Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc, Law and Justice) should include in its governmental programme the plan to locate of the key US defence military bases in Poland without consulting Brussels or European partners. Furthermore, they continue, the public declarations by representatives of the government and party in power are often in contradiction with the principles and the standards of tolerance and equality that are compulsory in the EU. Poland must be a responsible and far-sighted partner, they said, but the first European decisions taken by the new government have been “harmful and compromising: a solitary attempt at placing a veto on the directive on bank mergers” and there was also “rejection (…) regarding reform of the sugar market and the inexplicable stance taken during establishment of the budget for 2006”, MEPs say. They believe Polish European policy should not become a subject of dispute and haggling between parties.