Michał Kamiński

Michał Tomasz Kaminski ( born March 28, 1972 in Warsaw) is a Polish politician of the conservative party Polska jest Najważniejsza and Member of the European Parliament. He is Chairman of the European Conservatives and Reformists.

Career

Kaminski studied International Relations and Diplomacy at the University of Warsaw. At the age of 15 he joined the at that time still illegal national radical party NOP. In 1989 he was one of the founding members of the Zjednoczenie Chrześcijańsko - Narodowe (Christian- National Union), and he also worked as a radio and newspaper journalist in Bydgoszcz and Lomza. During the campaign for the Polish presidential election in 1995, he was press spokesman for the non-party conservative candidate Hanna Gronkiewicz- Waltz.

In the Polish parliamentary elections in 1997, he reached on the list of Akcja Wyborcza Solidarność ( Solidarity Electoral Action ) a seat in the Sejm. In 1999, he sparked a controversy when he traveled to London at a private meeting with Augusto Pinochet, who was there at that time under house arrest.

In 2001, he joined the Przymierze Prawicy at (Rights Alliance) and joined in the following year the new right-wing conservative party Prawo i Sprawiedliwość Law and Justice ( PiS ) to.

2001 came to a new controversy when he accused a Jewish Federation of wanting to prevent a memorial service to the Jewish Nazi victims in the town of Jedwabne. Kaminski dismissed the charges against him of anti-Semitism accusations as "ridiculous " back.

In September 2001 he was again elected to the Sejm, where he belonged to the agricultural and the Foreign Policy Committee.

After Poland's EU accession Kaminski was elected in the 2004 European elections to the European Parliament, where he, like all members of the national conservative PiS UEN Group joined, whose vice chairman, he was. He was also a member of the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection.

Kaminski was considered an important ally of the Polish President Lech Kaczynski in Polish presidential election in 2005, as representative of the moderate wing of the PiS. In July 2007, he was responsible for media policy Secretary of State in the Polish presidential office, spending his seat in the European Parliament; for him moved Ewa Tomaszewska after.

In the European elections in 2009, however, Kaminski came again and again won a mandate. Instead of the UEN Group, which is now dissolved, the PiS the new European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) joined them. At the inaugural meeting on 14 July 2009 he was set up by the ECR as a candidate for the vice presidential post of Parliament. However, he was not selected for this position, mainly due to the candidacy of British MPs Edward McMillan -Scott, who took from the ECR Group as an independent candidate and was elected thanks to the votes of the other groups. McMillan -Scott was subsequently excluded from the ECR. Kaminski, in turn, was elected chairman of the ECR Group, with which he became the first chairman of a political group in the European Parliament from an Eastern European country.

The end of 2010 Kaminski announced his withdrawal from the PiS and was like other PiS MEP in the founding of the new party Polska jest Najważniejsza (Poland is the most important thing ) involved, which gave a moderate conservative approach. He remained, however, first leader of the ECR. In early 2011, he announced his willingness to withdraw from this office to " intra- Polish " the conflict is not in the European Parliament to carry. He was succeeded on March 9, 2011, the Czech Jan Zahradil.