Andrzej Duda

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. In October 2001, holding Master of Law degree, 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 also obtained a Doctor of Law degree (LL.D.) at the Jagiellonian University. 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 Duda worked as a lecturer at Mieszko I College of Education and Administration, Poznań.

Duda is married to Agata Kornhauser-Duda, a teacher of German at Jan III Sobieski High School in Kraków. Still being high school students, they had met at a party. The couple have been married since 21 December 1994. They have one daughter, Kinga, who was born in 1995. Duda's father-in-law is Julian Kornhauser, a well-known writer, translator and literary critic.

Duda began his political career with the now-defunct Freedom Union Party in the early 2000s. After the parliamentary elections in 2005, he began his collaboration with the Law and Justice Party (PiS). From 2006 to 2007, Andrzej Duda was an undersecretary of state in the Ministry of Justice. Then, from 2007 to 2008, Duda 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 of the Republic of Poland. 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 member of the Sejm.

In September 2013, the news magazine Polityka commended Duda for being one of the most active members of parliament, at the time, 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.

In the second round Duda took 51.55% of the vote against the 48.45% share of his rival, then-incumbent president Bronisław Komorowski. On 26 May 2015, he officially resigned from party membership.

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

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).

In November 2015, basing on Art. 139 of the Constitution of Poland, Duda pardoned former Central Anticorruption Bureau (CBA) head Mariusz Kamiński 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. According to some lawyers (including professors Jan Zimmermann – Andrzej Duda's doctorate promoter, Leszek Kubicki – former Minister of Justice and Andrzej Zoll – former president of the Constitutional Tribunal) Duda breached the Constitution of Poland.

On 28 December 2015, Duda signed the Constitutional Tribunal bill (passed on 22 December 2015 by the Sejm), 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.

In June 2016, Duda rejected appointing 10 judges selected by the National Council of the Judiciary of Poland.

In September 2017, his approval rating stood at 71% and in February 2018, at 72%, a record surpassed only by Aleksander Kwaśniewski, whose approval ratings surpassed 75% from 1995 to 2005.

In July 2017, 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. The President's spokesman subsequently said that the third act – the common courts bill – would be signed. The veto was just one example of Duda opposing the policies of PiS.

In February 2018, Duda said that he would sign into law 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".

In May 2019, Duda visited Azerbaijan where he met with President Ilham Aliyev. He said that "gas and oil alike will flow... from Azerbaijan also to Poland. They will flow via Azerbaijan where the transportation corridors that are currently under construction constitute and will constitute the elements" of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

U.S. President Donald Trump praised Duda, saying: "He's doing a terrific job." In September 2019, Trump and Duda agreed to send 1,000 U.S. troops to Poland.

In June 2020, Duda said that he would not allow gay couples to marry or adopt children, while describing the LGBT movement as "a foreign ideology" and comparing it to indoctrination in the Soviet Union. He also pledged he would ban LGBT teaching in schools. In response to Duda's comments, former Prime Minister of Belgium Elio Di Rupo publicly asked European Commission for official reaction. Soon after his comments, Duda invited presidential candidate Robert Biedroń (who requested meeting the President) and an LGBT activist, Bartosz Staszewski to the Presidential Palace, though Robert Biedroń eventually did not take the invitation saying he won't until President Duda apologizes. According to Staszewski, during their meeting Duda cited freedom of speech to defend his words about "LGBT ideology".

On 4 July 2020, Duda proposed changing the constitution to ban LGBT couples from adopting children. On 6 July 2020, he signed a document with a presidential draft of the amendment to the Polish Constitution.

On 24 June 2020, Trump said at a press conference with Duda that the United States plans to move some U.S. troops from Germany to Poland. Trump said that "Poland is one of the few countries that are fulfilling their obligations under NATO — in particular, their monetary obligations — and they asked us if we would send some additional troops. They're going to pay for that."

In October 2020, Duda expressed deep concern over the escalation of hostilities between Azerbaijan and Armenia in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh and called on both sides to "cease military operations and engage in dialogue".