1. Andrzej Sebastian Duda was born on 16 May 1972 and is a Polish lawyer and politician who has been the sixth and current president of Poland since 2015.
36 Facts About Andrzej Duda
1. 2.
On 26 May 2015, Andrzej Duda resigned his party membership as the president-elect.
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Andrzej Duda was born on 16 May 1972 in Krakow, to Janina and Jan Tadeusz Andrzej Duda, professors at the AGH University of Science and Technology.
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Between 1987 and 1991, Andrzej Duda attended Jan III Sobieski High School, Krakow, where he excelled in Humanities.
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Andrzej Duda subsequently studied law at the Jagiellonian University, and earned a law degree.
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Andrzej Duda began his political career with the now defunct Freedom Union Party in the early 2000s.
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Andrzej Duda was an undersecretary of state in the Ministry of Justice between 2006 and 2007 before becoming a member of Polish State Tribunal from 2007 until 2008.
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From 2008 to 2010, during the presidency of Lech Kaczynski, Andrzej Duda was an undersecretary of state in the Chancellery of the President.
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In September 2013, the news magazine Polityka commended Andrzej 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.
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Andrzej Duda remained a member of the Sejm until he was elected to the European Parliament in 2014.
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Andrzej Duda was Komorowski's Law and Justice rival in the election.
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The first five-year term of Andrzej Duda began on 6 August 2015 with taking an oath of office during a National Assembly session.
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Andrzej 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.
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Andrzej Duda said that he hopes Poland will become a gateway to Europe for China.
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On 6 June 2023, Andrzej Duda presented three goals of Poland's presidency in the European Union in the first half of 2025.
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In 2024, Andrzej Duda criticised plans by Prime Minister Donald Tusk to suspend the right to asylum in Poland by irregular migrants, calling it a "fatal mistake" that would affect dissidents from Russia and Belarus.
17.
In November 2015, on the basis of Article 139 of the Constitution of Poland, Andrzej Duda pardoned former Central Anticorruption Bureau head Mariusz Kaminski and three CBA officers convicted by a court of 1st instance in the so-called "Land Affair", marking the first pardon granted by a president before reaching a final verdict.
18.
Andrzej Duda refused to swear in any of the five Constitutional Tribunal judge candidates selected by the Sejm of the VII term.
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Between 3 and 9 December 2015, Andrzej Duda swore in five other candidates for the same office selected by the Sejm of the VIII term.
20.
On 28 December 2015, Andrzej Duda signed the Constitutional Tribunal bill, which unequivocally breaches the Constitution of Poland according to the National Council of the Judiciary of Poland, the Public Prosecutor General and the Polish Ombudsman.
21.
In July 2017, Andrzej Duda informed the public he had decided to veto two controversial judicial bills backed by the government and passed by both houses of the Polish parliament.
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The veto was just one example of Andrzej Duda opposing the policies of PiS.
23.
In February 2018, Andrzej Duda said that he would sign into law the Amendment to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance, making it illegal to accuse 'the Polish nation' of complicity in the Holocaust and other Nazi German atrocities, a measure that has roiled relations with Israel, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu going as far as accusing the Polish government of "Holocaust denial".
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Andrzej Duda awarded it in recognition of Mosberg's achievements in advancing Polish-Jewish dialogue and developing cooperation between nations, and for preserving the memory of and communicating what happened in the Holocaust.
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In June 2020, Andrzej Duda said that he would not allow gay couples to marry or adopt children, while describing the LGBTQ movement as "a foreign ideology" and comparing it to indoctrination in the Soviet Union.
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Andrzej Duda pledged he would ban "LGBTQ teaching" in schools.
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On 4 July 2020, Andrzej Duda proposed changing the constitution to ban LGBTQ couples from adopting children.
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In February 2022, Andrzej Duda attended the opening ceremony of the Olympic Winter Games in Beijing and met with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
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Some Polish diplomats criticised Andrzej Duda's visit to China because some of Poland's Western allies boycotted the Winter Olympics in China due to the alleged Uyghur genocide and other human rights abuses in China.
30.
In October 2022, Andrzej Duda declared that Poland would be willing to host US nuclear weapons.
31.
In March 2023, Andrzej Duda visited gas-rich Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
32.
On 9 January 2025, Andrzej Duda asked Prime Minister Donald Tusk and his government to guarantee safe passage for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to travel to an event marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp by Soviet troops, despite Netanyahu facing an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for Israeli war crimes in the Gaza war.
33.
On 29 May 2023, during a press conference, Andrzej Duda announced the intention to sign the "Lex Tusk", a law establishing a commission to investigate Russian influence in Poland.
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Andrzej Duda's father-in-law is Julian Kornhauser, a well-known writer, translator and literary critic.
35.
Andrzej Duda is a keen skier, and he participated in the Polish Academic Championships in Alpine skiing while he was a university student.
36.
Andrzej Duda took part in religious ceremonies on many occasions, including Midnight Mass, the blessing of food on Holy Saturday, and the Corpus Christi procession in Krakow.