PhD, MEP (ECR Poland), was Poland’s first Minister for European Integration, one of the architects and negotiators of Poland’s accession and membership of the EU (1991-96, 2000-2001).

He has been a Member of the European Parliament since 2004 and was the first Pole to serve ad the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee (2007-2009) and Vice-President of the European Parliament (2004-2007).

As an activist of the “SOLIDARNOŚĆ” movement at the beginning of the 1980s, he was its Deputy Spokesman in the region of Łódź.

For more than twenty years, he followed an academic career. He was Associate Professor and Head of the European Research Centre at the University of Łódź and later Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence.

Professor and director of the European Union Institute at Collegium Civitas in Warsaw, vice-president of the College of Europe (Bruge, Natolin) and the founder of the European Institute in Łódź, which prepared and educated Polish officials to work in the EU institutions. Board member of the Polish Institute of Internationals Affairs, TEPSA, and Firends of Europe.

He has received the Order of “Polonia Restituta”, the French Legion of Honour Medal, the Ukrainian Order of Merit and the Georgian Presidential Order of Sr. George.