New Hope merges with The Empire Strikes Back in a legal workaround aimed at keeping Poland’s third-largest political force on the ballot ahead of a 2027 election.
Poland’s far right has merged two parties in an unsubtle attempt to dodge a court ruling a year before a parliamentary election in which it could play kingmaker.
Over the weekend, New Hope (Nowa Nadzieja) formally joined forces with a newly registered outfit called The Empire Strikes Back (Imperium Kontratakuje), both of which appear to draw their names from the Star Wars movie franchise. The maneuver appears to shield New Hope from deregistration after a Warsaw court ruled in November that it should be struck from the register of political parties for failing to file its 2024 financial report on time.
Libertarian firebrand Sławomir Mentzen leads New Hope and forms the backbone of Confederation (Konfederacja), the nationalist alliance that is currently Poland’s third-largest political force. Confederation holds 16 seats in the country’s parliament and polls in the low teens — enough to shape future coalitions, block legislation and potentially tip the balance in the 2027 vote.
Mentzen had appealed the November court ruling, but rather than wait for the process to play out, his allies registered The Empire Strikes Back in January as a Plan B. At a closed-door congress on Saturday, delegates voted to merge the two entities, transferring New Hope’s structures and assets to the new party.
Confederation officials have been blunt about their aims.
“We can say that we outsmarted the system. It’s quite an original solution,” Wojciech Machulski, Confederation spokesperson and head of The Empire Strikes Back, told Polish outlet Zero.pl.
Machulski described the new party as a “technical” solution to ensure continuity if the court decision is upheld. The merged entity is expected to revert to the name New Hope.
With elections due in the second half of 2027, Confederation is polling at 13 percent, trailing Jarosław Kaczyński’s opposition nationalist Law and Justice (26 percent) and Donald Tusk’s ruling center-right Civic Coalition (34 percent), according to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls.