Donald Tusk
DONALD TUSK (Gdańsk, 1957) began studying history in 1976 at the University of Gdańsk, where he got involved in illegal activities against the Communist regime. In the 1980s he was an activist in the underground Solidarity movement. In 1980 he founded the Independent Students Association (NZS), part of Solidarity. In 1983 he launched Political Review, a monthly seeking promoted to economic liberalism and democracy. An informal think-tank supporting Lech Wałęsa was centred around the periodical. After the fall of Communism the think-tank members known as the Gdańsk Liberals formed a government following the first free presidential elections in Poland. They also founded the Liberal Democratic Congress, with Tusk as its leader. In the 1990s Tusk served as an MP and deputy Speaker of the Senate. In 2001 he was one of the initiators of the centrist Civic Platform Party, which he led from 2003. Tusk was Prime Minister from 2007 to 2014, making him the longest-serving premier in democratic Poland, and the first to be re-elected. Tusk was elected President of the European Council in 2014, and re-elected for a second term in 2017.
