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Andrzej Duda
Polish lawyer and politician who was President of Poland from 2015 to 2025.
Biography
Andrzej Duda was born in Kraków in 1972 to two university professors. He studied law at the Jagiellonian University, where he became a research assistant in administrative law in 2001 and completed a doctorate in 2005.
He entered politics with the Freedom Union and moved to Law and Justice after 2005. He was an undersecretary of state at the Ministry of Justice in 2006-2007 and in the Chancellery of President Lech Kaczyński from 2008 to 2010, then sat in the Sejm from 2011 and in the European Parliament from 2014.
As the Law and Justice candidate he unseated President Bronisław Komorowski in the 2015 election and gave up his party membership after winning. He was re-elected in 2020 against Rafał Trzaskowski. His presidency coincided with the party's consolidation of power, including a dispute over the Constitutional Tribunal that critics described as democratic backsliding, and after Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine he helped coordinate international support for Ukraine's military. His second term ended in August 2025.
Offices held
Bronisław Komorowski Succeeded by
Karol Nawrocki
Affiliations
Party membership
- Jan 1, 2000 – Jan 1, 2001 Freedom Union (Poland)
- Jan 1, 2005 – May 26, 2015 Law and Justice
Employment
- from Jan 1, 2001 Jagiellonian University Research assistant, Department of Administrative Law; mostly on unpaid leave since 2006, no end date given
Education
- Jagiellonian University Law degree and doctorate of law (January 2005)