Jacek Emil Saryusz-Wolski (born 19 September 1948 in

Łódź Łódź, also rendered in English as Lodz, is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located approximately south-west of Warsaw. The city's coat of arms is an example of cant ...

) is a Polish diplomat and PiS ( Law and Justice) politician. He has been a

Member of the European Parliament A Member of the European Parliament (MEP) is a person who has been elected to serve as a popular representative in the European Parliament. When the European Parliament (then known as the Common Assembly of the ECSC) first met in 1952, its ...

(MEP) since June 2004.European Parliament website, Jacek Saryusz-Wolski
/ref> He served as Vice President of the

European Parliament The European Parliament (EP) is one of the legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it adopts ...

(2004–2007). Saryusz-Wolski is chairman of the Executive Board of the “Foundation College of Europe”, in charge of the Natolin campus of the

College of Europe The College of Europe (french: Collège d'Europe) is a post-graduate institute of European studies with its main campus in Bruges, Belgium and a second campus in Warsaw, Poland. The College of Europe in Bruges was founded in 1949 by leading ...

Early life and education

Saryusz-Wolski comes from a family of the Jelita coat of arms. His father, Emil, a chemical engineer, was stationed with Polish troops in Britain during the Second World War, while his mother, Eryka, worked as a landscape gardener.Martin Banks (April 13, 2005)
Pole Positioner
'' European Voice''. He graduated from the First High School of "Nicolaus Copernicus" in

and he obtained a degree in economics from the

University of Łódź The University of Łódź ( Polish: ''Uniwersytet Łódzki'', Latin: ''Universitas Lodziensis'') is a public research university founded in 1945 in Łódź, Poland, as a continuation of three higher education institutions functioning in Łódź i ...

. He also completed postgraduate studies at the ''Centre Européen Universitaire'' in Nancy, France. In the 1970s he was a lecturer on the European Communities at the

and in the 1980s he was an assistant professor in the Department of Socialist Political Economy of the

. At the turn of the 1980s and 1990s led the Center for European Studies at the University of Łódź.

Political career

Saryusz-Wolski was nominated the first Polish

plenipotentiary A ''plenipotentiary'' (from the Latin ''plenus'' "full" and ''potens'' "powerful") is a diplomat who has full powers—authorization to sign a treaty or convention on behalf of his or her sovereign. When used as a noun more generally, the wor ...

for European integration and foreign aids (''pełnomocnik ds. integracji europejskiej i pomocy zagranicznej'') when this office was created in 1991 by the prime minister

Jan Krzysztof Bielecki Jan Krzysztof Bielecki (born 3 May 1951) is a Polish liberal politician and economist. A leading figure of the Gdańsk-based Liberal Democratic Congress in the early 1990s, Bielecki served as Prime Minister of Poland for most of 1991. In his p ...

. He held this position till 1996, despite the frequent government changes. He returned to the government in 2000, when the prime minister Jerzy Buzek has nominated him a secretary in the European Integration Committee (''Komitet Integracji Europejskiej''). Jacek Saryusz-Wolski played an important role in the negotiations in

Nice Nice ( , ; Niçard dialect, Niçard: , classical norm, or , nonstandard, ; it, Nizza ; lij, Nissa; grc, Νίκαια; la, Nicaea) is the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes departments of France, department in France. The Nice urban unit, agg ...

in 2000. In 2001, he unsuccessfully ran for the Polish Senate on behalf of ''Blok Senat 2001''.

Member of the European Parliament

Saryusz-Wolski was elected an MEP at the European Parliament election on 13 June 2004, as a candidate of

Civic Platform Civic Platform ( pl, Platforma Obywatelska, PO)The party is officially the Civic Platform of the Republic of Poland (''Platforma Obywatelska Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej''). is a political party in Poland. It is currently led by Donald Tusk. It ...

, in the constituency #6 (

Łódź Voivodship Łódź, also rendered in English as Lodz, is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located approximately south-west of Warsaw. The city's coat of arms is an example of canti ...

) receiving 66,589 votes (that is 16.92%, the best result in the region). On 20 July 2004 he was elected as one of the Vice Presidents of the European Parliament for the EPP, and was at the position till 16 January 2007.Website of Platforma Obywatelska, Jacek Saryusz-Wolski
/ref> He was re-elected in 2009 and

2014 File:2014 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Stocking up supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE) for the Western African Ebola virus epidemic; Citizens examining the ruins after the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping; Bundles of wat ...

. Since first joining the European Parliament, Saryusz-Wolski has been a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, which he chaired between 2007 and 2009. In late 2004, Saryusz-Wolski's candidacy to become Poland’s first-ever European Commissioner was supported by the main Polish opposition parties but the post eventually went to the country’s Europe minister,

Danuta Hübner Danuta Maria Hübner, née Młynarska ( or ; born 8 April 1948) is a Polish politician and Diplomat and Economist and Member of the European Parliament. She has served as European Commissioner for Regional Policy from 22 November 2004 until 4 Jul ...

. In March 2006, Saryusz-Wolski was elected Vice President of the European People's Party (EPP)Dr. Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, official website
/ref> for a three-year term. He also served as Vice-President and member of the national board of

until October 2010 and as leader of the Polish delegation of centre-right MEPs until 2012. In 2007, the Civic Platform failed to secure sufficient backing from within the centre-right

European People’s Party The European People's Party (EPP) is a European political party with Christian-democratic, conservative, and liberal-conservative member parties. A transnational organisation, it is composed of other political parties. Founded by primarily Ch ...

Group for Saryusz-Wolski, its candidate as for the post of Vice-President of the European Parliament.Andrew Bounds (January 16, 2007)
Polish and German MEPs fight over key jobs
''

Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, England, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Ni ...

''. In 2010, Saryusz-Wolski joined the ''Friends of the EEAS'', a unofficial and independent pressure group formed because of concerns that the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton was not paying sufficient attention to the Parliament and was sharing too little information on the formation of the

European External Action Service The European External Action Service (EEAS) is the diplomatic service and combined foreign and defence ministry of the European Union (EU). The EEAS is led by the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (HR/VP), who is al ...

. In addition to his parliamentary assignments, Saryusz-Wolski chaired the EPP Energy Ministers Meeting until 2017. In 2015, he and

Françoise Grossetête Françoise Grossetête (born 17 May 1946 in Lyon) is a French politician who served as Member of the European Parliament for the South-East of France from 1994 until 2019. She is a member of The Republicans; part of the European People's Party. ...

guided the EPP’s working groups on economy and environment and foreign affairs in developing options for getting the EU to speak with a unified voice on external energy security matters. In March 2017, the

Polish government The Government of Poland takes the form of a unitary parliamentary representative democratic republic, whereby the President is the head of state and the Prime Minister is the head of government. However, its form of government has also been id ...

of Prime Minister

Beata Szydło Beata Maria Szydło (, née Kusińska , 15 April 1963) 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 ...

openly opposed the reelection of

Donald Tusk Donald Franciszek Tusk ( , ; born 22 April 1957) is a Polish politician who was President of the European Council from 2014 to 2019. He served as the 14th Prime Minister of Poland from 2007 to 2014 and was a co-founder and leader of the Civic ...

as President of the European Council for a second two-and-a-half year term and put forward Saryusz-Wolski as a challenger. After Saryusz-Wolski accepted the nomination for Council president, Civic Platform ejected him from the party. He was subsequently stripped of his position of Vice-President within the EPP. He also stopped being a member of the EPP group in the Parliament. In February 2019, he was appointed as the leader of the Law and Justice (PiS) list in the European elections in constituency No. 4 (Warsaw). In March of the same year he joined the parliamentary group of European Conservatives and Reformists. As a result of the May vote, he was elected the MEP for the fourth time, receiving 186,851 votes.

Political positions

Saryusz-Wolski is widely regarded as having played a big role in the 2004

Orange Revolution The Orange Revolution ( uk, Помаранчева революція, translit=Pomarancheva revoliutsiia) was a series of protests and political events that took place in Ukraine from late November 2004 to January 2005, in the immediate afterm ...

in Ukraine and in support for the opposition in

Belarus Belarus,, , ; alternatively and formerly known as Byelorussia (from Russian ). officially the Republic of Belarus,; rus, Республика Беларусь, Respublika Belarus. is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by ...

. In the debate on the EU’s energy diversification and security policies, he has in the past argued that “

Nord Stream 2 Nord Stream 2 (German-English mixed expression; german: Nord and en, Stream 2, literally 'North Stream2'; russian: Северный поток — 2) is a natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany running through the Baltic Sea, financed by ...

would be, above all, detrimental in geopolitical terms . . . for the purpose of exerting more political pressure and applying blackmail on the EU, its eastern member states and its eastern neighbours.” In 2015, news media reported that Saryusz-Wolski was included in a Russian blacklist of prominent people from the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been de ...

who are not allowed to enter the country.

Other activities

European Policy Centre The European Policy Centre (EPC) is a Brussels-based not-for-profit think tank on European Union affairs, founded in 1997. Activities Under the guidance of Herman Van Rompuy, the EPC's Chief Executive is Fabian Zuleeg, a German economist. It ...

, Member of the Strategic Council * European Union Institute at

Collegium Civitas Collegium Civitas is a private university for the social sciences located in Warsaw, the capital of Poland. It is open to new inventions in higher education: interdisciplinary approaches, closer lecturer-student relations, study abroad programs, i ...

, Director * Natolin European Centre, Chairman * College of Europe Foundation at the

campus in

Natolin Natolin is a residential neighborhood in Ursynów, the southernmost district of Warsaw. Until the 1980s, Natolin and its neighbouring area Wolica, was a small village located right outside the city limits, with numerous orchards. After that it wa ...

, Chairman * Euro-Atlantic Association, Member *

Polish Institute of International Affairs The Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM, pl, Polski Instytut Spraw Międzynarodowych) in Warsaw is a Polish think tank which carries out research and training in international relations. In this field, it ranks as one of the most ...

(PISM), Deputy Chairman * German-Polish-Ukrainian Society (GPUS), Member

Recognition

Saryusz-Wolski has been awarded the Commander's Cross of the

Order of Polonia Restituta The Order of Polonia Restituta ( pl, Order Odrodzenia Polski, en, Order of Restored Poland) is a Polish state order established 4 February 1921. It is conferred on both military and civilians as well as on foreigners for outstanding achievement ...

(2003), the French

Legion of Honour The National Order of the Legion of Honour (french: Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur), formerly the Royal Order of the Legion of Honour ('), is the highest French order of merit, both military and civil. Established in 1802 by Napoleon ...

(2003), the Ukrainian Order of Merit of 1st Class (2006), the Georgian St. George's Order of Victory (2013).

Personal life

Saryusz-Wolski is married to his wife Grazyna, a professor in English literature at Lodz University. The couple have a son and a daughter.

References

External links

Nauka Polska

College of Europe
{{DEFAULTSORT:Saryusz-Wolski, Jacek 1948 births Living people College of Europe alumni Law and Justice MEPs MEPs for Poland 2004–2009 MEPs for Poland 2009–2014 MEPs for Poland 2014–2019 Academic staff of the University of Łódź University of Łódź alumni MEPs for Poland 2019–2024 Academic staff of Collegium Civitas