Jose Barroso (photo source: Wikipedia)

European People's Party Congress is opening in Warsaw today. Leaders of the 13 European Union countries as well as seventeen hundred delegates have arrived to Poland's capital to discuss five major topics including climate and demographic changes as well as financial crisis, threats to security and the role of Europe in the modern world.

Among them will be Jose Manuel Barroso, the 11th president of the European Commission.  His political activity began in his college days. He was one of the leaders of the underground  Reorganising Movement of the Proletariat Party, later Communist Party of the Portuguese Workers. In December 1980, Barroso joined the right-of-centre PPD  or Democratic Popular Party later Social Democratic Party where he remains to the present day.

Polish Radio correspondent in Brussels Beata Płomecka spoke to Mr. Barroso shortly before his arrival to Poland's capital for the EPP Congress.