Paweł Kowal

Pawel Robert Kowal graduated from Fr. Stanisław Konarski High School in Rzeszow. Kowal graduated from the Faculty of History at the Jagiellonian University in 1999. He studied at Collegium Invisibile in Warsaw between 1996 and 1998 under Professor Krystyna Kersten. While there, he participated in study abroad programs in Russia in Yakutia, Buryatia, and Khakassia. In 1999, he became an assistant at the Institute of Political Studies at the Polish Academy of Sciences. There Kowal defended his doctoral thesis Politics of General Wojciech Jaruzelski's administration 1986-1989. Attempts at political system reform in January 2011.

Between 1998 and 2000, Kowal worked in, amongst others, the office of the Prime Minister and the office of the head of the Polish Department of Foreign Affairs. In 2000-2001 he served as the Director of the Department of International Relations and European Integration in the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. Between 2001 and 2003, he worked as an expert on Eastern foreign policy in the Center for International Relations. From 2003 to 2005, he was the director of the Mazovian Regional Center of Culture and the Arts. In 2003, Kowal co-founded the Warsaw Uprising Museum, and has worked as an expert for the Museum ever since. In 2005, he led the Press Office of the Mayor of Warsaw. He continues to contribute articles on international relations.

From 2002 to 2005, Kowal was the chairman of the Ochota district council in Warsaw. In the 2005 parliamentary elections, Kowal was elected to the Sejm from the okreg (electoral district) of Chrzanow as a member of Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (PiS) (Law and Justice), where he served as chairman of the Committee on Culture and Media and as Vice-President of PiS in the Sejm. Between 20 July 2006 and 22 November 2007, Kowal served as Secretary of State in the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs in President Jaroslaw Kaczynski's cabinet. Pawel Kowal was re-elected in the 2007 Sejm elections, and served again as Vice-President of PiS in the Sejm, as well as vice-president of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

Pawel Kowal was elected in 2009 to European Parliament from the Kraków electoral district. Once in Parliament, Mr. Kowal joined the Group of European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), serving as Chairman of the parliamentary delegation to Ukraine.

Pawel Kowal left Law and Justice on November 22, 2010 to become a co-founder of Polska Jest Najważniejsza (PJN) (Poland Comes First). On June 4, 2011, he was elected the President of the party. On September 7 of the same year, he was appointed to the National Security Council.[2] In December 2013 members of PJN decided to join the newly formed Poland Together party, where Paweł Kowal became the head of the party's National Committee.[3] In October 2019, he successfully ran in the parliamentary elections with the Civic Coalition from the Cracow region.

On August 14, 2014, regarding to the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crash he said that soon everyone will remember Putin as not the one who provoked the shooting down of the plane, but as the one who brought help.[4] Four days later he said that the aim of the discussion is to declare ceasefire, and that it should be Russia who should stop support to separatists.[5]

On August 20, 2014, regarding Russian intervention in Ukraine he said that Putin is trying to drag a conflict not declare war. He also stated that the Kremlin's politicians as well as the President of Russia himself are eager to try to create the same empire, as before.[6]

Pawel Kowal at the 2012 Warsaw Book Fair

Kowal was the chairman of the Rzeszow Youth Council. Between 1996 and 1998, he served as the president of the Jagiellonian club while working in the Miroslaw Dzielski Center in Kraków. From 1997 to 2005 he worked in the Center for Political Thought, where he managed the Polish State program for Poles in the East. Kowal is a member of Association "Polish Community," a Polish Senate-sponsored organization dedicated to building ties between Poland and Polonia, and is also an associate member of the World Association of the Home Army. Kowal has worked with the Jan Nowak-Jeziorański program of the College of Eastern Europe (Kolegium Europy Wschodniej) in Wroclaw since 2007. He has also sat on the board of the Institute of Public Affairs, a Polish think tank. In 2008, he became an honorary member of the Volunteer Fire Department in Chocznia, Poland.

Kowal is married and has four children.

• Officer of the Order of Polonia Restituta – 2014[7]
• Prof. T. Strzembosz Award – 2013
• Order of Christ the Saviour (Ukraine) – 2013
• Order of Merit (Portugal), Grand Cross – 2008[8]
• Order of Merit, Third Class (Ukraine) – 2007[9] (awarded in 2009)
• Silver Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis (Poland) – 2005[10]
• Silver Guardian Medal of the Places of National Remembrance (Poland) – 2005

• Państwo polskie wobec Polaków na Wschodzie (współautor), Kraków 2000
• Włodzimierz Bączkowski. O wschodnich problemach Polski. Wybór pism (współautor), Kraków 2000, Wrocław 2005
• Nie jesteśmy ukrainofilami (współautor), Wrocław 2002, 2008
• „Wymiar wschodni” UE – szansa czy idée fixe polskiej polityki? (redaktor, współautor), Warszawa 2002
• Krajobrazy z Mistralami w tle, Kraków 2011
• Koniec systemu władzy. Polityka ekipy gen. Wojciecha Jaruzelskiego w latach 1986–1989, Warszawa 2012
• Między Majdanem a Smoleńskiem. Rozmawiają Piotr Legutko i Dobrosław Rodziewicz, Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków 2012

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