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]
The Civic Platform is a centre to 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.
The Polish People's Party is an agrarian political party in Poland. It is currently led by Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz.
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.
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 has been the leader of the Law and Justice party (PiS) 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.
The Greens is a political party in Poland.
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].
Małgorzata Maria Kidawa-Błońska, née Grabska is a Polish politician, film producer, and sociologist currently serving as Marshal of the Senate. She was Marshal of the Sejm from 25 June 2015 to 11 November 2015 at the end of the Seventh term's composition of the lower house, after which being voted a Deputy Marshal of the Eighth and Ninth term, each time nominated by the opposition party Civic Platform, under the marshalcy of Marek Kuchciński and Elżbieta Witek, respectively.
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 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.
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, 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 is classified as a centre-left to left-wing party in the context of Polish politics.
Parliamentary elections were held in Poland on 25 October 2015 for the eighth term of the Sejm and Senate, which ran from 12 November 2015 until 2019.
Left Together is a left-wing political party in Poland.
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 Law and Justice (PiS) retained its majority in the Sejm, but 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.
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-left and left-wing.
