Biography
Born in Warsaw,the daughter of Jerzy Nowacki,a rector at the Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology,and Izabela Jaruga-Nowacka,a former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Social Policy under Marek Belka's Cabinet. Her mother was listed on the flight manifest [1] [2] of the Tupolev Tu-154 of the 36th Special Aviation Regiment carrying the President of Poland Lech Kaczyński which crashed near Smolensk-North airport near Pechersk near Smolensk,Russia,on 10 April 2010,killing all aboard.
Nowacka was educated at the University of Warsaw,where she was active as a feminist in the Federation for Women and Family Planning. From 1997 to 2006,she was a member of the youth wing of Labour United and then of the party itself. In 2014 she stood unsuccessfully in the European elections in Lublin for Europa Plus,supported by Aleksander Kwaśniewski. She went on from that defeat to join Janusz Palikot's Your Movement,becoming a joint leader,and helped to create the United Left,a broad coalition. On 4 October 2015 she was named as its candidate for prime minister if it won the election, [3] and on 17 October she presented the coalition's programme at a conference in Katowice. [4] However,in the elections on 25 October the United Left failed to reach the 8 per cent threshold for obtaining parliamentary representation under Poland's system of election,while Nowacka herself failed to be elected in the Warsaw I parliamentary constituency.
The Polish elections of 2015 were unusual in that most of the major parties contesting them were led by women. While Nowacka was the leader of the United Left,Ewa Kopacz of the governing Civic Platform party was the incumbent prime minister,and Beata Szydło of the opposition Law and Justice party was the main challenger. In the event,Szydło was elected with an overall majority. [5]
In 2016,Foreign Policy magazine included Nowacka,together with Agnieszka Dziemianowicz-Bąk of Razem,on its annual list of the 100 most influential global thinkers for their role in organizing protests against a total ban on abortion in Poland. [6]
In June 2019,Nowacka became leader of the political party Polish Initiative (iPL),which she originally founded as an association in 2016. [7] She is currently standing for election in Constituency №26 (Słupsk) as a candidate for the Civic Coalition,of which iPL is a member party.
Nowacka has been fiercely critical of the influence that the Catholic Church has in Polish politics. When in October 2020 the Polish parliament considered placing stricter enforcement on abortion,Nowacka claimed that the Catholic bishops of Poland,the majority of whom strongly support such legislation,had "blood on their hands". [8] She later attended a protest against the new abortion restrictions,where she was tear-gassed by a police officer after approaching him and showing her ID card. [9]
On 13 December 2023,she was appointed as the Minister of National Education by Donald Tusk. [10]
The Civic Platform is a centre-right liberal conservative political party in Poland. Since 2021, it has been led by Donald Tusk, who previously led it from 2003 to 2014 and was President of the European Council from 2014 to 2019.
Labour Union is a minor social-democratic political party in Poland. It was a member of the Party of European Socialists (PES) until April 2022.
The president of the Council of Ministers, colloquially and commonly referred to as the prime minister, is the head of the cabinet and the head of government of Poland. The responsibilities and traditions of the office stem from the creation of the contemporary Polish state, and the office is defined in the Constitution of Poland. According to the Constitution, the president nominates and appoints the prime minister, who will then propose the composition of the Cabinet. Fourteen days following their appointment, the prime minister must submit a programme outlining the government's agenda to the Sejm, requiring a vote of confidence. Conflicts stemming from both interest and powers have arisen between the offices of President and Prime Minister in the past.
From 1989 through 1991, Poland engaged in a democratic transition which put an end to the Polish People's Republic and led to the foundation of a democratic government, known as the Third Polish Republic, following the First and Second Polish Republic. After ten years of democratic consolidation, Poland joined NATO in 1999 and the European Union on 1 May 2004.
Law and Justice is a right-wing populist and national-conservative political party in Poland. Its chairman is Jarosław Kaczyński.
Jarosław Aleksander Kaczyński is a Polish politician. He co-founded the Law and Justice (PiS) party in 2001 with his twin brother and has served as its long-time leader since 2003. He served as Prime Minister of Poland from 2006 to 2007, and has twice held the post of Deputy Prime Minister of Poland, first from 2020 to 2022, and a second time from June to November 2023. He is considered to have been the de facto leader of Poland, when PiS formed the government in 2005–2007 and again in 2015–2023, with direct political influence over the prime ministers Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, Beata Szydło and Mateusz Morawiecki.
Hanna Stanisława Suchocka is a Polish political figure, lawyer, professor at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and Chair of the Constitutional Law Department, former First Vice-President and Honorary President of the Venice Commission.
Izabela Walentyna Jaruga-Nowacka was a Polish political figure who had served in the national Parliament (Sejm) since 1993 and, in May 2004, rose to become Deputy Prime Minister under Prime Minister Marek Belka, serving until October 2005, while also, concurrently, filling in his cabinet, from November 2004 to October 2005, the position of Minister Polityki Społecznej [Minister for Social Policy].
Ewa Bożena Kopacz is a Polish politician who has served as a Vice-President of the European Parliament since 2019. She previously was Marshal of the Sejm from 2011 to 2014, the first woman to hold the office, as well as Prime Minister of Poland from 2014 to 2015. In addition, Kopacz was Minister of Health from 2007 until 2011. Since 2001, she has been a member of Civic Platform, which she chaired from 2014 to 2016. Kopacz succeeded Donald Tusk as prime minister, becoming the second woman to hold the office after Hanna Suchocka (1992–1993). Her term as prime minister ended on 16 November 2015, when she was succeeded by Beata Szydło.
Beata Maria Szydło is a Polish politician who has served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) since 2019. A member of Law and Justice (PiS), she previously served as the prime minister of Poland from 2015 to 2017. Szydło became the third woman to hold the office, after Hanna Suchocka and her immediate predecessor Ewa Kopacz. She currently is a vice-chair of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group in the European Parliament. She is considered to have been a de iure leader of Poland, with the de facto leader being Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of the party Szydło is a member of.
Left and Democrats was a centre-left electoral alliance of political parties in Poland which was created on 3 September 2006, before the Warsaw municipal election of 2006. The coalition's aim was to provide an alternative for both Law and Justice and Civic Platform, which have been Poland's two major political parties since 2005. LiD contested their first national election in October 2007 and won 53 seats to the Polish parliament, the Sejm. The LiD alliance was dissolved in April 2008, following a rift between the member parties.
Your Movement was a social liberal, neoliberal, populist and anti-clerical political party in Poland. The party was founded by Janusz Palikot, a former Civic Platform MP, in October 2010 as Palikot's Movement. The party was classified as a right-wing, centre-right, centrist, centre-left, or a left-wing party in the context of Polish politics, one which was "struggling with its political identity and finding it difficult to decide whether it was really a left-wing party at all or more of an economically and socially liberal centrist grouping."
Parliamentary elections were held in Poland on 25 October 2015. All 460 members of the Sejm and 100 senators of the Senate were elected. The election was won by the largest opposition party, the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS), with 38% of the vote against the governing Civic Platform (PO), which achieved 24%. Official results, announced on 27 October, gave Law and Justice 235 of the 460 seats, a majority of four. PiS vice chairwoman Beata Szydło succeeded PO leader Ewa Kopacz as Prime Minister of Poland, heading a one-party cabinet.
Adrian Tadeusz Zandberg is a Polish historian, computer programmer, doctor of humanities, and left-wing politician serving as a member of the Sejm for Warsaw I. He is one of the co-leaders of Left Together.
Parliamentary elections were held in Poland on 13 October 2019. All 460 members of the Sejm and 100 senators of the Senate were elected. The ruling right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) won re-election to a second term retaining its majority in the Sejm. However, it lost its majority in the Senate to the opposition. With 43.6% of the popular vote, Law and Justice received the highest vote share by any party since Poland returned to democracy in 1989. The turnout was the highest for a parliamentary election since the first free elections after the fall of communism in 1989. For the first time after 1989, the ruling party controlled one house, while the opposition controlled the other.
Agnieszka Ewa Dziemianowicz-Bąk is a Polish left-wing social activist and politician who has served as the Minister of Family, Labour and Social Policy since 2023. She has been a member of the Sejm since 2019.
The United Right was a parliamentary group formed by Jarosław Gowin and Zbigniew Ziobro with their respective parties, Poland Together and United Poland. After their cooperation at 2015 Polish parliamentary election with the Law and Justice party, 'United Right' became a media label for the ruling right-wing political alliance of Law and Justice with its aforementioned partners in Poland.
The European Coalition was a short-lived electoral alliance and list in Poland. It was established on the verge of 2019 European Parliament election by a group of former prime ministers and former foreign ministers, including Jerzy Buzek, Ewa Kopacz, Grzegorz Schetyna and Radosław Sikorski. They declared the will to construct "one broad list in European Parliament election, the aim of which would be to restore Poland's strong position in the European Union". The Coalition is to be pro-European and centrist.
Krzysztof Jan Śmiszek is a Polish lawyer, politician, human rights activist and university lecturer. He has been a member of the Sejm since 2019 and Deputy Minister of Justice since 2023.
The Polish Initiative is a progressive political party in Poland. It was formed as an association in 2016, and was registered as a political party in 2019. Its leader is Barbara Nowacka, and it is a part of the Civic Coalition. It supports principles of social liberalism, social democracy and secularism. It has been described as centre-right, centrist, centre-left or left-wing.
