Jerzy Buzek

Jerzy Karol Buzek (born 3 July 1940) is a Polish politician and Member of the European Parliament from Poland.

Jerzy Karol Buzek was born to a Lutheran family on 3 July 1940 in Smilovice, Czechoslovakia (at the time part of Nazi Germany and called Smilowitz).

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 the Trans-Olza region.

Buzek's father was an engineer.

After the Second World War, his family moved to Chorzów.

He is a Lutheran.

In 1963 Jerzy Buzek graduated from the Mechanics-and-Energy Division of the Silesian University of Technology, specialising in chemical engineering.

He became a scientist in the Chemical Engineering Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

In the 1980s, Buzek was an activist of the 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 organiser 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 (AWS) and co-author of the AWS's economic program.

He has served as Prime Minister of Poland from 1997 to 2001, since being elected to the European Parliament in 2004, he served as President of the European Parliament between 2009 and 2012.

He is married to Ludgarda Buzek and is the father of Polish actress Agata Buzek.

Since 1997 he has been a professor of technical science.

He is also an honorary doctor of the universities in Seoul and Dortmund among others.

From 1997 to 2001, Buzek was a coalition Prime Minister of Poland.

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.

Between the years 1997–2001 he was the Prime Minister of Poland, first of the right-centrist AWS–Freedom Union 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.

In 1998 he became the first laureate of the Grzegorz Palka Award and was nominated European of the Year by the European Union Business Chambers Forum.

In 1998 he was named 'Person of the Year' by the influential Polish political weekly Wprost.

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.

After losing the parliamentary elections in 2001, he stepped back from political life 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.

AWS was defeated in the 2001 Polish parliamentary election.

Buzek resigned as the chairman of AWS Social Movement and was replaced by Mieczysław Janowski.

His return to political life in 2004 saw him gain the largest popular vote in Poland as the member for Katowice to the European Parliament standing for the Civic Platform.

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 Civic Platform, 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 multibillion-euro spending program for the years 2007–2013.

He won the award for the second time in 2009.

On receiving the award again, as President of the European Parliament, he stressed that he was the first winner to be honoured for his work beyond the borders of Poland.

He was the first Prime Minister of the 3rd Republic of Poland to serve a full term.Jerzy Buzek was the first Lutheran Prime Minister in the history of Poland.

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).

Whilst President of the European Parliament, on 30 March 2011, he was awarded an honorary fellowship of the Institution of Chemical Engineers at a meeting of the European Federation of Chemical Engineering (EFCE) in Brussels, Belgium.

On 12 September 2018, he voted in favor of approving the controversial Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market.