At the 2007 election to the Sejm, the party ran as part of the Left and Democrats (LiD) list, and won three of the alliance's 53 seats.

It was since strongly supported, but thus far not yet officially joined, by then Prime Minister Marek Belka and centrist members of the Democratic Left Alliance.

In the 2001 general elections, the Freedom Union received only 3.1% and thus failed to cross the 5% threshold required to gain entry to Parliament.

With Władysław Frasyniuk replacing Geremek as chairman, the Freedom Union continued to exist as a centrist party, but lost much of its relevance in Polish politics.

On 29 February 2005, Frasyniuk came out with the initiative to merge the UW into a new social-liberal party to be called "the Democrats", which he presented with Mazowiecki and Jerzy Hausner.

Belka, another former SLD member, had left the party in the early 1990s, but joined Leszek Miller's government as a non-party minister of economic affairs in 2001 before resigning the following year.

After an interlude as economic director in the interim coalition administration of Iraq in 2003, Belka returned to Poland to become non-party head of an SLD minority government in 2004.

It defined itself as, "above all, a group of young people not previously involved in politics, which at the same time is drawing on the best traditions of the liberal-democratic milieu around the Freedom Union" [1].

A manifesto entitled "Development through Democracy" issued by the party in February 2005 was signed by a broad range of Polish intellectuals and artists, including Paweł Huelle (writer), Marek Edelman (physician, last surviving leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Rising), Agnieszka Holland (director), Marek Kondrat (actor), Kazimierz Kutz (director), Jan Miodek (linguist), Daniel Olbrychski (actor), Jerzy Pilch (writer), Henryk Samsonowicz (historian), Jerzy Szacki (sociologist).

[6] The party wanted to appeal to the urban, liberal middle class, and its proposals included a creation of a special metropolitan voivodeship for Warsaw.

Also, the party's formal electoral and later parliamentary coalition with SLD, Left and Democrats, which lasted from 2006 until 2008, has been seen as disloyalty of Solidarity's ideals by many.