Waldemar Tomaszewski (former spelling ''Valdemar Tomaševski'', born 3 March 1965) is a

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken *Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...

-Lithuanian politician who is also an activist for the Polish minority in Lithuania and

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). Leader of the

Electoral Action of Poles in Lithuania An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has operated ...

(LLRA), Tomaszewski has been an MEP since 2009. He sits in the

European Conservatives and Reformists The European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) is a soft Eurosceptic, anti- federalist political group of the European Parliament. The ECR is the parliamentary group of the European Conservatives and Reformists Party (ECR Party) European pol ...

group A group is a number of persons or things that are located, gathered, or classed together. Groups of people * Cultural group, a group whose members share the same cultural identity * Ethnic group, a group whose members share the same ethnic iden ...

, of which he is a Member of the Bureau on the group executive.

Biography

First elected to

Vilnius district Vilnius ( , ; see also other names) is the capital and largest city of Lithuania, with a population of 592,389 (according to the state register) or 625,107 (according to the municipality of Vilnius). The population of Vilnius's functional urb ...

council for Electoral Action in 1995, Tomaszewski was elected President of LLRaL in 1999. He was first elected to the

Seimas The Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania ( lt, Lietuvos Respublikos Seimas), or simply the Seimas (), is the unicameral parliament of Lithuania. The Seimas constitutes the legislative branch of government in Lithuania, enacting laws and amendmen ...

at the 2000 election, winning 51% of the vote in the single-seat constituency of

Šalčininkai Šalčininkai (, , yi, סאָלעטשניק ''Solechnik'', be, Салечнікі) is a town in Vilnius County, Lithuania, situated south-east of Vilnius, near the border with Belarus. Šalčininkai attained the town status in 1956 and is now ...

. In the same year, he became deputy mayor of Vilnius district, serving from 2000 to 2003. Finding himself as one of only two LLRA members in the Seimas, during the parliamentary term, he moved between factions, including

Homeland Union The Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian Democrats ( lt, Tėvynės sąjunga Lietuvos krikščionys demokratai, TS–LKD), also known colloquially simply as the Conservatives, is a centre-right political party in Lithuania. It has 18,000 mem ...

and

Order and Justice Order, ORDER or Orders may refer to: * Categorization, the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated, and understood * Heterarchy, a system of organization wherein the elements have the potential to be ranked a number of d ...

. Tomaszewski was re-elected to the Seimas in 2004 with 63% of the vote: one of five candidates in the country elected in the first round. He was re-elected again at the 2008 election, winning 61% of the vote: eight times his nearest competitor's share. In the May 2009 presidential election, he became the first presidential candidate nominated by LLRA. Receiving 4.7% of the national vote, Tomaszewski finished fourth, with

Dalia Grybauskaitė Dalia Grybauskaitė (; born 1 March 1956) is a Lithuanian politician who served as the eighth President of Lithuania from 2009 until 2019. She is the first woman to hold the position and in 2014 she became the first President of Lithuania to be ...

winning comfortably. The following month, he stood for

election An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has opera ...

to 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 ...

. Winning 8.4% of the vote, up from 5.7% in 2004, LLRA won its first ever MEP, with Tomaszewski topping the list and being elected. He joined the

, and was appointed to the group's bureau. He was reelected for next terms in

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 ...

and in

2019 File:2019 collage v1.png, From top left, clockwise: Hong Kong protests turn to widespread riots and civil disobedience; House of Representatives votes to adopt articles of impeachment against Donald Trump; CRISPR gene editing first used to experim ...

. He has been awarded the Commander's Cross of the

Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland The Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland ( pl, Order Zasługi Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej) is a Polish order of merit created in 1974, awarded to persons who have rendered great service to Poland. It is granted to foreigners or Poles resident ab ...

Footnotes

External links

*
Profile at European Parliament website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tomaszewski, Waldemar 1965 births Living people Commanders of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland Electoral Action of Poles in Lithuania – Christian Families Alliance MEPs Lithuanian people of Polish descent Members of the Seimas MEPs for Lithuania 2009–2014 MEPs for Lithuania 2014–2019 MEPs for Lithuania 2019–2024 Politicians from Vilnius Vilnius Gediminas Technical University alumni

Biography

See also

Footnotes

External links