Jerzy Buzek

Jerzy Buzek (born July 3, 1940, Śmiłowice, Poland [now Smilovice, Czech Republic]) is a Polish engineer, educator, and political leader who served as prime minister of Poland (1997–2001) and as president of the European Parliament (2009–12).

Buzek earned a degree in technical sciences from the Silesian University of Technology in Gliwice. He later taught there as well as at the Opole University of Technology; he also held positions at Polonia University in Częstochowa and at the Polish Academy of Sciences. Buzek joined the Solidarity trade union in 1980 and served as chairman of its first national congress in 1981. Following the communist government’s suppression of the union in December 1981, Buzek continued to be a leader of the organization after it went underground. After Solidarity reemerged in 1989, first as a legal opposition movement and then as the country’s first postcommunist ruling party, Buzek remained a prominent member of the union.

In September 1997 Buzek, as a candidate of the conservative Solidarity Electoral Action (Akcja Wyborcza Solidarność; AWS) coalition, was elected to the Sejm, the lower house of the Polish legislature. The AWS won a plurality of seats in the election, but the group’s leader, Marian Krzaklewski, declined the post of prime minister. The AWS then turned to Buzek, whose nomination was confirmed by Polish Pres. Aleksander Kwaśniewski in October. Buzek oversaw the formation of a centre-right coalition government with the liberal-democratic Freedom Union (Unia Wolności; UW) party, and his cabinet was sworn in on October 31, 1997. The following month Buzek’s government survived a vote of confidence.

Buzek was largely unknown at the time of his appointment, and some detractors claimed that he would be little more than a puppet of Krzaklewski. Others expressed a lack of confidence in Buzek’s ability to stifle far-right elements of the AWS. Nevertheless, many Poles welcomed the choice of a political outsider who was committed to fostering economic growth. Free-market proponents saw a friend in Buzek, an economic liberal who supported the privatization of state-owned industries, such as coal mining. In addition, Buzek was a practicing Protestant in an overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country, and this was seen as evidence of his comfort with opposing viewpoints. Indeed, he was described as a consensus builder and a mediator.

During his term as prime minister, Buzek focused on privatization as well as on administrative reform. In 1999 Poland’s local government was restructured, and the country’s health care, pension, and education systems were reformed. In the international arena, Buzek began accession talks with the European Union (EU), and in 1999 he gained Poland’s admission into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Buzek stepped down in 2001, after parliamentary elections resulted in a left-wing victory.

Representing the conservative European People’s Party, Buzek was elected to the European Parliament in 2004, the year that Poland joined the EU. In July 2009 the parliament’s members chose him to preside over the body. He was the first European Parliament president to hail from the former communist bloc. He stepped down in January 2012 and was replaced by Martin Schulz of Germany’s Social Democratic Party.