Leszek Miller

Leszek Miller (2013)

Leszek Cezary Miller (born July 3, 1946 in Żyrardów ) is a Polish politician. He was Prime Minister of Poland from 2001 to 2004 .

Political career

Functionary of the Labor Party

As a student, Miller joined the youth organization of the Polish United Workers' Party (PVAP). In 1969 he was accepted into the party. He was a full-time party official and was sent to study at the School of Social Sciences of the Central Committee of the PAVP. In 1986 he became the head of the Skierniewice Voivodeship party organization . After two years he was appointed to the post of Central Committee secretary in Warsaw , thus advancing into the party leadership. In 1989 he was promoted to the Politburo and took part in the round table discussions .

Secretary General of the Social Democrats

In 1990 he became general secretary and deputy chairman of the “Social Democracy of the Republic of Poland” ( SdRP - Socjaldemokracja Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej ), which emerged from the PVAP . After the failed August coup in Moscow in 1991 , he was accused of staying in a Soviet training center on the Crimean peninsula as a steward of the Moscow putschists during the period in question and of having shifted party funds instead of transferring them to the Ministry of Finance .

minister

In 1993 he became Minister of Labor and Social Policy in the first post-communist coalition government under Waldemar Pawlak . In 1996, under his successor Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz , he took over the management of the Chancellery of the Council of Ministers and thus also the office of intelligence coordinator. From January to October 1997 he headed the Ministry of the Interior . During his tenure, experts from the Solidarność democracy movement were dismissed from the former party and secret service archives and replaced by former functionaries from the time of the People's Republic.

Opposition leader

In 1999 he was elected to succeed Józef Oleksy as chairman of the opposition League of the Democratic Left (SLD - Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej ), to which the SdRP and other groups had merged. He gave up this post in March 2004.

Prime Minister

In October 2001, after the victory of an electoral bloc from the SLD and the Union of Labor ( UP - Unia Pracy ), which emerged from the left wing of the Solidarność trade union , he was tasked with forming a government by President Aleksander Kwaśniewski in the Sejm elections . He formed a coalition with the Polish Peasant Party ( PSL - Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe ).

Miller's government struggled above all with the difficult economic situation in Poland, which was characterized by an unemployment rate of more than 18%, high public debt and stagnation. At the end of his term in office, economic growth was more than 6%, but unemployment had not fallen significantly. The government carried out a controversial austerity program under his leadership. At the same time, the health reform of the previous government under Jerzy Buzek was canceled, and a new state health fund was created instead.

The Miller government implemented all institutional and legal regulations that had been agreed with the EU Commission for Poland's accession to the EU . Accession was confirmed on December 13, 2002 at the EU summit in Copenhagen . The referendum on EU accession on June 7th and 8th, 2003 resulted in an approval rate of 77.5% with a participation of 58.8%.

In March 2003, the Miller administration and President Kwaśniewski decided that Poland would join the “international coalition” formed by US President George W. Bush and send Polish soldiers to Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein . Miller was also one of the signatories of the "Letter of Eight", in which heads of state and government of eight European countries decidedly sided with Bush in the Iraq conflict . As part of the Polish-American cooperation in 2003, as it became known six years later, the US secret service CIA was given a Polish military base in Stare Kiejkuty in the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship , at which, according to media reports, Arab prisoners were also apparently tortured.

The "Letter of Eight" led to a rift between the Polish leadership and the red-green federal government under Gerhard Schröder , which rejected the war against Saddam Hussein. The differences intensified when Miller, together with the conservative Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar, tried to block reform of the EU.

On 4 December 2003 survived Miller injured a crash of his government helicopter type Mil Mi-8 near Warsaw. Several vertebrae had broken and he had to sit in a wheelchair for weeks.

In March 2004 his government lost its majority in the Sejm after 20 MPs left the SLD parliamentary group . They accused him of tolerating corruption and financial affairs right up to the governing bodies of his own party. The trigger for this split from the SLD was the Rywin affair . Miller was urged from within his own ranks, but also from the coalition partners, to resign as Prime Minister, also because he had fallen far behind in the popularity polls and because he was not expected to have any chances in the elections in the following year as a top candidate. His resignation was agreed for May 2, 2004, the day after Poland joined the EU . His successor was the former finance minister Marek Belka .

Again in the opposition

In the SLD, Miller was blamed for the devastating defeat in the 2005 Sejm elections . For the early parliamentary elections in 2007 it was not even drawn up. So he ran on the list of the left-wing national protest party "Self-Defense" ( Samoobrona ). This failed because of the five percent hurdle .

In 2010, Miller rejoined the SLD. In the parliamentary elections in Poland 2011 , which were unsuccessful for the SLD , he was re-elected to the Sejm. After the election Miller was able to prevail with 14:11 votes against Ryszard Kalisz in a fight vote for the parliamentary group chairmanship of the SLD. On December 10, 2011, after the resignation of Grzegorz Napieralski, he was re-elected head of his party. After the SLD missed re-entry into the Sejm in the 2015 parliamentary elections as part of the electoral alliance "United Left" , Miller withdrew from chairing the SLD. His successor was Włodzimierz Czarzasty .

Miller is a symbol of the continuity from PVAP to SLD. He has repeatedly appealed to his supporters not to “be ashamed” of the People's Republic .

family

Miller comes from a humble background: his father was a tailor, his mother a seamstress. When he was six months old, his father left the family and grew up with his mother, who raised him Catholic. Miller became an acolyte . He has been married since 1969 and had a son, Leszek Miller Jr., who passed away in August 2018.

Publications

• So it was: Poland's entry into the EU. With a foreword by Gerhard Schröder . Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-455-50192-6 .
• Anatomia siły . Rozmowa z Robertem Krasowskim. Warszawa 2013, ISBN 978-83-7700-071-7 ( Anatomy of Force. Conversations with Robert Krasowski )

Web links

Commons : Leszek Miller  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Leszek Miller's blog (Polish)
• Entry on Leszek Miller in the Members' database of the European Parliament

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Leszek Miller
2. ↑ ludzie.wprost.pl
3. ↑ rp.pl
4. ↑ Dieter Bingen: The processing of the communist past in Poland . Federal Institute for Eastern Studies (BIOst), 27/1997, p. 26. http://www.ssoar.info/ssoar/bitstream/handle/document/4304/ssoar-1997-bingen-die_aufarbeit_der_kommunistische_vergangenheit.pdf?sequence=1
5. ↑ Dieter Bingen: The "Social Democracy of the Republic of Poland" (SdRP) in the "Democratic Left Alliance" (SLD). In: G. Hirscher (Ed.): Communist and post-communist parties in Eastern Europe. Munich 2000, p. 73 (Arguments and materials on current affairs, 14.) PDF file ( Memento of the original from December 28, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
6. ↑ ludzie.wprost.pl
7. ↑ virtualpolen.de ( Memento of the original from July 18, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
8. ↑ info-polen.com
9. ^ Economist.com
10. ↑ "We are citizens of Europe". In: Spiegel Online. June 9, 2003, accessed November 29, 2014 . 
11. ↑ tagesschau.de
12. ↑ John Goetz, Britta Sandberg : Torture in Masuria . In: Der Spiegel . No. 18 , 2009 ( online ).
13. ↑ The friendly takeover. In: zeit.de. June 5, 2003, accessed November 29, 2014 . 
14. ^ Severin Weiland: The Spanish-Polish axis break. In: Spiegel Online. March 16, 2004, accessed November 29, 2014 . 
15. ^ Gerhard Gnauck: "In a pinch also in a wheelchair". In: welt.de. December 6, 2003, accessed November 29, 2014 . 
16. ↑ polska.newsweek.pl ( Memento of the original from August 25, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
17. ↑ przeglad-tygodnik.pl
18. ^ New government after joining the EU. In: Spiegel Online. May 2, 2004, accessed November 29, 2014 . 
19. ↑ tvp.info
20. ↑ ludzie.wprost.pl
21. ^ Polskie Radio, The Heart Beats Left , January 21, 2010
22. ↑ tvn24, "Niosę worek z kamieniami". Miller nowym szefem klubu SLD , October 19, 2011
23. ↑ Gazeta.pl, Leszek Miller ponownie szefem SLD , December 10, 2011  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
24. ↑ wiadomosci.dziennik.pl