BIO

Former Prime Minister of the Republic of Poland, Minister for European Integration, co-founder of the Liberal Democratic Congress and the Freedom Union, and Executive Director of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London, has been present in the political and economic life of Poland for more than 20 years. From October 2003 to January 2010 he served as President of Bank Pekao S.A.. Since 2008 he has been a member of the Board of Trustees of the National Museum in Warsaw.In November 2009 he was appointed Chairman of the Board of the Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM) and served in this capacity until December 2015.PISM is a leading Central European think tank on foreign policy, European integration, security and international economic relations.
In March 2010, he was appointed by Prime Minister Donald Tusk as chairman of the Economic Council to the Prime Minister. The primary task of the Economic Council is to provide the Prime Minister with an independent and objective opinion on current and planned government activities. The Council also evaluates Poland’s socio-economic situation against the background of phenomena taking place in Europe and the global economy. He served in this position until December 2014.In January 2015, he joined EY Poland as Chairman of the Partners Council.Since 2010, Jan Krzysztof Bielecki has lectured to students at the University of Gdansk.In 1991, he received the National Order of the Legion of Honor – Grand Officer. In the same year he received the Grand Gwanghwa Medal – “Order of Diplomatic Service Merit” awarded by the South Korean authorities. In 2010 Bronislaw Komorowski, President of the Republic of Poland, presented Jan Krzysztof Bielecki with the highest state decoration, the Order of the White Eagle. In the same year, he also received the civilian decoration “Merito Bene” presented by the Minister of Foreign Affairs. In 2013, The Slovak Atlantic Commission and The Czech Euro-Atlantic Council Jagello 2000 awarded Jan Krzysztof Bielecki the Prize in Bratislava for his merits in promoting the idea of freedom and building democracy in Central Europe.
Jan Krzysztof Bielecki began his professional career in 1973 as a lecturer in economics at the University of Gdansk, where he worked until 1981, when he was fired for political anti-communist activities. In the early 1980s, he was an advisor to leading Solidarity figures and participated in organizing the historic strike at the Gdansk Shipyard in 1981. In the first half of the 1980s, Jan Krzysztof Bielecki took an active part in the activities of the then outlawed Solidarity – publishing underground political materials and acting as a liaison for the executive committee of the underground Solidarity. During this period, Bielecki contributed to the creation of Solidarity’s economic policy by developing a plan for a market-based approach as an alternative to the centrally planned communist economy of Poland at the time.