Leszek Cezary Miller is a Polish politician who served as prime minister of Poland from 2001 to 2004. He has served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) in 2019–2024.
The Democratic Left Alliance was a social-democratic political party in Poland. It was formed on 9 July 1991 as an electoral alliance of centre-left parties, and became a single party on 15 April 1999. It was the major coalition party in Poland between 1993 and 1997, and between 2001 and 2005, with four Prime ministers coming from the party: Józef Oleksy, Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz, Leszek Miller and Marek Belka. It then faded into opposition, overshadowed by the rise of Civic Platform and Law and Justice.
Aleksander Kwaśniewski is a Polish politician and journalist. He served as the president of Poland from 1995 to 2005. His tenure as President was marked by modernization of Poland, rapid economic growth, the drafting of a new Polish Constitution (1997), and the accession of Poland to NATO (1999) and the European Union (2004). In 2004, he brokered a pro-democratic agreement during the Orange Revolution in Ukraine.
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.
Polish members of the Catholic Church, like elsewhere in the world, are under the spiritual leadership of the Pope in Rome. The Latin Church includes 41 dioceses. There are three eparchies of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in the country, with members of the Armenian Catholic Church under the Ordinariate for Eastern Catholics in Poland. The oridnaries of these jurisdictions comprise the Episcopal Conference of Poland. Combined, these comprise about 10,000 parishes and religious orders. There are 40.55 million registered Catholics in Poland. The primate of the Church is Wojciech Polak, Archbishop of Gniezno. In the early 2000s, 99% of all children born in Poland were baptized Catholic. In 2015, the church recorded that 97.7% of Poland's population was Catholic. Other statistics suggested this proportion of adherents to Catholicism could be as low as 85%. The rate of decline has been described as "devastating" the former social prestige and political influence that the Catholic Church in Poland once enjoyed. On the other hand, a 2023 survey of 36 countries with large Catholic populations using data from the World Values Survey revealed that 52% of Polish Catholics claimed to attend Mass weekly, the seventh highest of the nations surveyed and the highest among European countries. Most Poles adhere to Roman Catholicism. About 71.3% of the population identified themselves as such in the 2021 census, down from 88% in 2011.
Gazeta Wyborcza is a Polish nationwide daily newspaper based in Warsaw, Poland. It was launched on 8 May 1989 on the basis of the Polish Round Table Agreement and as a press organ of the trade union "Solidarity" in the election campaign before the Contract Sejm. Initially created to cover Poland's first partially free parliamentary elections, it rapidly grew into a major publication, reaching a circulation of over 500,000 copies at its peak in the 1990s.
Roman Jacek Giertych is a Polish political figure, historian, advocate, Giertych served in PiS government as Deputy Prime Minister of Poland and Minister of National Education from May 2006 to August 2007. He was a member of the Sejm from 2001 to 2007 and the chairman of the League of Polish Families party.
Orlen S.A., commonly known as Orlen, is a Polish multinational oil refiner, petrol retailer and natural gas trader headquartered in Płock, Poland. The company's subsidiaries include the main oil and gas companies of the Czech Republic and Lithuania, Unipetrol and Orlen Lietuva respectively.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is the Polish government department tasked with maintaining Poland's international relations and coordinating its participation in international and regional supra-national political organisations such as the European Union and United Nations. The head of the ministry holds a place in the Council of Ministers.
The Rywin affair was a corruption scandal in Poland, which began in late 2002 while the post-communist government of the SLD was in power. It is named after Polish film producer Lew Rywin, who was a key figure.
Andrzej Marian Olechowski is a Polish politician. He was one of the co-founders of liberal conservative party Civic Platform in 2001 with Maciej Płażyński and Donald Tusk. He served as Minister of Finance (1992) in the Jan Olszewski's Government and Minister of Foreign Affairs (1993–1995) in the Waldemar Pawlak's Government.
Jacek Waldemar Bąk is a Polish former professional footballer who played as a central defender.
Arkadiusz Mularczyk is a Polish politician. He was elected to the Sejm on 25 September 2005, getting 9,566 votes in 14 Nowy Sącz district as a candidate from the Law and Justice list.
Joanna Katarzyna Skrzydlewska is a Polish politician. She was elected to the Sejm on 25 September 2005, getting 11,822 votes in 9 Łódź district as a candidate from the Civic Platform list.
Dariusz Wdowczyk is a Polish former professional football manager and player. He played for Gwardia Warsaw, Legia Warsaw, Celtic, Reading, and Polonia Warsaw. He has subsequently carved out a career in football management.
Krzysztof Brejza is a Polish politician, currently serving as member of the European Parliament (MEP). He was member of the Sejm of the Republic of Poland, representing the Bydgoszcz district. Between 2005 and 2006 he was a member of the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Regional Assembly.
The Polish Communist Party, or the Communist Party of Poland, is an anti-revisionist Marxist–Leninist communist party in Poland founded in 2002 claiming to be the historical and ideological heir of the Communist Party of Poland, Polish Workers' Party and the Polish United Workers' Party.
Witold Jan Waszczykowski is a Polish politician. He was the Minister of Foreign Affairs between 2015 and 2018. Waszczykowski was a Member of the Sejm (2011–2019), and has been the Member of the European Parliament since 2019.
Zbigniew Rau is a Polish politician and lawyer who served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland between 2020 and 2023. He previously served as the voivode of Łódź Voivodeship from 2015 to 2019.