Andrzej Duda

Andrzej Sebastian Duda (born 16 May 1972) is a lawyer and politician who has served as President of Poland since 6 August 2015.

Duda was born on 16 May 1972 in Kraków, to Janina (Milewska) and Jan Tadeusz Duda, professors at the AGH University of Science and Technology.

His grandfather fought in the Polish–Soviet War and later was a member of the Home Army during the Second World War.

Between 1987 and 1991, Duda attended Jan III Sobieski High School, Kraków, where he excelled in Humanities.

He subsequently studied law at the Jagiellonian University, and earned a law degree.

Duda began his political career with the now defunct Freedom Union Party in the early 2000s.

In 2001, he was appointed as a research assistant in the Department of Administrative Law of the Jagiellonian University's Faculty of Law and Administration.

In January 2005, Duda earned a Doctor of Law degree (LL.D.) at the Jagiellonian University.

After the parliamentary elections in 2005, he began his collaboration with the Law and Justice Party (PiS).

Due to his political career, he has been mostly on unpaid leave from the university since September 2006, except for a 13-month interval beginning in September 2010, when he returned to the university.

Additionally, he was a lecturer at Mieszko I College of Education and Administration, Poznań.

From 2006 to 2007, he was an undersecretary of state in the Ministry of Justice.

Then, from 2007 to 2008, he was a member of the Polish State Tribunal.

From 2008 to 2010, during the presidency of Lech Kaczyński, Duda was an undersecretary of state in the Chancellery of the President.

In 2010, he was an unsuccessful candidate to become the Mayor of Kraków as a PiS candidate, but was more successful in the 2011 parliamentary election, where he received 79,981 votes for the Kraków area, and thus became a member of the Sejm.

Before becoming president, Andrzej Duda was a member of the Polish Lower House (Sejm) from 2011 to 2014 and the European Parliament from 2014 to 2015.

In September 2013, the news magazine Polityka commended Duda for being one of the most active members of parliament, describing him as being open to opposition arguments and as refraining from personal attacks, as part of his role at the Commission for Constitutional Responsibility.

Duda remained a member of the Sejm until he was elected to the European Parliament in 2014.

As Bronisław Komorowski's presidential term was expiring, Komorowski was able to seek re-election in a scheduled presidential election.

Duda was Komorowski's Law and Justice rival in the election.

Andrzej Duda was the presidential candidate for the Law and Justice party (PiS) during the presidential election in May 2015.

In the first round of voting, he received 5,179,092 votes – 34.76% of valid votes.

In the second round of voting, he received 51.55% of the vote, beating the incumbent president Bronisław Komorowski, who received 48.45% of the vote.

On 26 May 2015, Andrzej Duda resigned his party membership as the president-elect.

In the first round of the 2015 presidential election, Duda came first, receiving 5,179,092 votes and thus 34.76% of valid votes.

In the second round Duda took 51.55% of the vote against the 48.45% share of his rival, the incumbent president Bronisław Komorowski.

On 26 May 2015, he officially resigned from party membership; recent precedent calls for the president to not be a formal member of a political party.

The first five-year term of Andrzej Duda began on 6 August 2015 with taking an oath of office during a National Assembly session.

Duda rejected the European Union's proposal of migrant quotas to redistribute asylum seekers, saying: "I won't agree to a dictate of the strong. I won't back a Europe where the economic advantage of the size of a population will be a reason to force solutions on other countries regardless of their national interests".

In September 2015 Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz declared that Poland, as an expression of "European solidarity", would take in 2,000 people over the next two years, mainly from Syria and Eritrea (out of 3,700 originally requested).

Duda and Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović were the originators of the Three Seas Initiative.

Duda repeatedly met with general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping, stating that "Polish companies will benefit hugely" from China's Belt and Road Initiative.

On 24 October 2019, he received the official support of PiS ahead of his re-election campaign in 2020.

He finished first in the first round and then went on to defeat Rafał Trzaskowski in the runoff with 10,440,648 votes or 51.03% of the vote.

Throughout his first and second terms, Duda has largely aligned himself with the right-wing ideologies espoused by PiS and its leader Jarosław Kaczyński.

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Duda has played an important role in coordinating international efforts to support Ukraine's military.

In the first round of the 2020 presidential election, Duda appeared to come in first, receiving almost 44% of the votes.

Warsaw mayor Rafał Trzaskowski came in second, with just over 30% of the vote.

The second round took place on 12 July.

Duda won reelection.