Jerzy Buzek

Jerzy Buzek
28th President of the European Parliament 13th of the Elected Parliament
Incumbent
Assumed office 14 July 2009
Preceded by	Hans-Gert Pöttering
Prime Minister of the Republic of Poland 9th Prime Minister of the Third Republic
In office 31 October 1997 – 19 October 2001
President	Aleksander Kwaśniewski
Vice PM	Longin Komołowski, Leszek Balcerowicz, Janusz Tomaszewski, Janusz Steinhoff
Preceded by	Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz
Succeeded by	Leszek Miller
Personal details
Born	(1940-07-03) 3 July 1940 Smilovice, Silesia, now Czech Republic
Political party	Ruch Społeczny (part of Solidarity Electoral Action), Civic Platform
Profession	Engineer

Professor Jerzy Buzek Template:IPAr (born 3 July 1940) is a Polish engineer, academic lecturer and politician. He was Prime Minister of Poland from 1997 to 2001 and has been a member of the European Parliament since 13 June 2004. On 14 July 2009, he was elected as President of the European Parliament. He succeeded Hans-Gert Pöttering.

Youth

Jerzy Buzek was born on 3 July 1940 in what is now Smilovice in the Zaolzie region of Silesia, now in the Czech Republic At the time of his birth, it was officially named Smilowitz and was part of Landkreis Teschen of Nazi-Germany. He was born into the prominent Buzek family, which participated in Polish politics in the Second Polish Republic during the interbellum. The family was part of the Polish community in Zaolzie. Buzek's father was an engineer. After the Second World War, his family moved to Chorzów. He is a Protestant.

Professional career

In 1963 Jerzy Buzek graduated from the Mechanics-and-Energy Division of the Silesian University of Technology in Gliwice specializing in chemical engineering. He became a scientist in the Chemical Engineering Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Gliwice. Since 1997 he has been a professor of technical science. He is also an honorary doctor of the universities in Seoul and Dortmund.

From 1997 to 2001, Buzek was Prime Minister of Poland (see below). In 1998 he became a laureate of the Grzegorz Palka Award, was nominated the European of the Year by the European Union Business Chambers Forum and Man of the Year by a Polish political weekly, Wprost.

After losing the parliamentary elections in 2001, he stepped back from Polish political life (although he was elected a member of the European Parliament in 2004) and focused more on his scientific work, becoming the prorector of Akademia Polonijna in Częstochowa and professor in the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the Opole University of Technology in Opole.

Political career

In the 1980s Jerzy Buzek was an activist of the democratic anti-communist movements, including the legal (1980–1981 and since 1989) and underground (1981–1989) Solidarity trade union and political movement in communist Poland. He was an active organizer of the trade union's regional and national underground authorities. He was also the chairman of the four national general meetings (1st, 4th, 5th and 6th) when the Solidarity movement was allowed to participate in the political process again.

Jerzy Buzek was a member of the Solidarity Electoral Action (Akcja Wyborcza Solidarność, AWS) and co-author of the AWS's economic program. After the 1997 elections he was elected to the Sejm, the lower house of the Polish Parliament, and was soon appointed Prime Minister of Poland. In 1999 he became the chairman of the AWS Social Movement (Ruch Społeczny AWS) and in 2001 he became the Chairman of the Solidarity Electoral Action coalition.

Jerzy Buzek's government

Between the years 1997–2001 he was the Prime Minister of Poland, first of the right-centrist AWS–UW coalition government until 2001, and then of the rightist AWS minority government. His cabinet's major achievements were four significant political and economic reforms: a new local government and administration division of Poland, reform of the pension system, reform of the educational system, and reform of the medical care system. AWS was defeated in the Polish parliamentary election, 2001. Buzek resigned as the chairman of AWS Social Movement, and was replaced by Mieczysław Janowski.

Polish Member of the European Parliament

On 13 June 2004, in the European Parliament election, 2004, Jerzy Buzek was elected a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from the Silesian Voivodeship, basing his candidacy only on the popularity of his name and on direct contact with the voters. He received a record number of votes, 173,389 (22.14% of the total votes in the region). His current party affiliation is with the Platforma Obywatelska, the governing party in Poland, which is a member of the European People's Party.

In the 2004-2009 European Parliament, he was a member of the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy, an alternate member of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, a member of the Delegation to the EU–Ukraine Parliamentary Cooperation Committee, and an alternate delegate for the delegation for relations with the countries of Central America. He served as rapporteur on the EU's 7th Framework Programme for Research and Development, a multi-billion euro spending programme for the years 2007-2013.

On 7 June 2009, in the European Parliament election, 2009, Buzek was re-elected as a Member of the European Parliament from the Silesian Voivodeship constituency. Just as in the previous election, Buzek received a record number of votes in Poland: 393,117 (over 42% of the total votes in the district).

President of the European Parliament

On 14 July 2009, Buzek was elected President of the European Parliament with 555 votes, becoming the first person from the former Eastern Bloc to gain that position. He succeeded the German Christian Democrat MEP, Hans-Gert Pöttering. He has pledged to make human rights and the promotion of the Eastern partnership two of his priority during his term of office, which will last two and a half years until, due to a political deal, Social Democrat MEP Martin Schulz will take over. The start of his campaign to become President was marked by some controversy, after he said in a press conference that English, French, and Polish are "the most important languages" of the EU, though he later contended that he meant they are "among the best-known" languages.

Career Timeline

Education

• from 1997 to 2001: Professor of technical sciences, actively engaged in public work, Prime Minister of Poland
• Honorary doctorates of the Universities of Dortmund, Seoul, Süleyman Demirel University (Isparta)
• University lecturer of long standing at Opole, Gliwice and Częstochowa, researcher at the Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Gliwice
• 1972: Research stay, on a British Council scholarship, at the University of Cambridge

Career

• 1992–1997: Representative of Poland at the International Energy Agency – Programme of Greenhouse Gas Effect
• 1996: Organiser and chairman of an international network of 19 institutions working on energy and environmental protection
• Author of some 200 research papers, over a dozen rationalisations and three patents in the fields of environmental protection, power and process engineering
• 1981: Member of the independent, self-governing trade union 'NSZZ Solidarność', Chairman of the I National Congress of Delegates of 'Solidarność' in
• 1981: Active in the Solidarność underground structure after
• 1997: Elected as a Member of the Polish Parliament in
• As Prime Minister, in 1999, took Poland into NATO and prepared the country for integration into the European Union (including decentralisation of the State – consolidation of the role of local self-government)
• In 1998, began accession negotiations
• 1999: Represented the Social Movement of Solidarity Electoral Action (AWS) in the PPE–DE
• 1999: Established the annual Pro Publico Bono prize for the best national civic initiatives
• Set up the Family Foundation together with his wife (1998), having gained greater understanding of the meaning of help for the needy after their experiences with the battle for the life of their own child

External links

• Template:EP MEP info/6th term
• Declaration (PDF) of financial interests (in Polish)