Andrzej Duda

Biography

Andrzej Sebastian Duda (born 16 May 1972) is a Polish lawyer and politician who served as the sixth president of Poland from 2015 to 2025. Before becoming president, he served as Member of the Sejm from 2011 to 2014 and as Member of the European Parliament from 2014 to 2015. Born in Kraków, 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, placing first but falling well short of the required absolute majority. 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, Duda resigned his party membership as the president-elect. In October 2019, Duda 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.