European leaders and Polish politicians paid tribute to former foreign minister, Solidarity activist and MEP, Professor Bronislaw Geremek who has died in a car crash, in western Poland. He was 76 years old.
Danuta Isler reports
Born in Warsaw in 1932 Bronislaw Geremek was a legendary figure in the anti-communist opposition and a leading scholar of medieval history. He was Poland’s foreign minister from 1997 to 2000 and later served as an MEP in the European Parliament. In March 1999 as foreign minister he signed the treaty under which Poland joined NATO. He also headed the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe in 1998. The news of his death came as a shock to many Polish politicians. In an official statement Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote: “Professor Geremek was unreservedly devoted to Poland and Poles.” Former president Aleksander Kwasniewski who met Geremek during the 1989 round table talks with the communist regime called professor 'one of the fathers of Polish democracy.' President Lech Kaczynski, who is in Paris for the summit and Bastille Day celebrations, said Geremek’s death is a huge loss for Poland.
'I am very deeply moved. It was a fact that he was my political opponent but at the same time I met him in August 1980 and he was one of the driving forces behind the events of that time. He was undoubtedly a great politician who will always have an important place in the country's history. I'd like to repeat that we had different views after 1989 but professor Geremek was an exceptionally intelligent man.'
Many European politicians also expressed their deep regret after hearing of his death. A minute’s silence was held during the Mediterranean Union Summit in Paris. France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy wrote in a letter of condolence that Bronislaw Geremek was the personification of basic virtues of the European ideal. Italian President Giorgio Napolitano called Geremek 'a great Polish patriot and a keen European'. The head of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso said professor Geremek was a symbol of freedom whose entire life proved his uncompromising political courage. The president of the European Parliament, Hans Gert-Poettering called professor Geremek's tragic death a loss for the whole Europe.
'Bronislaw Geremek undoubtedly belonged to the greatest Polish patriots who at the same time were great Europeans. And the personlaity of Bronislaw Geremek represents that you can be near to your country and near to Europe as well.'
The European Parliament and many across the EU, including his political opponents, rallied behind Geremek last year when Polish authorities threatened to strip him of his mandate as a member of the European Parliament. He had refused to file a statement saying whether he had ties to the communist-era secret police and was removed from an honorary post in Poland, but retained his European mandate. Konrad Szymanski, a member of the opposition Law and Justice Party worked with Bronislaw Geremek in the European Parliament.
'I remember two such situations when there were attempts to launch initiatives that were critical towards Poland. On my request profesor Geremek took up mediation and all other steps he could to either negotiate, weaken, delay or even eliminate any negative initiative or resolution within the European Parliament that would harm Poland's reputation.'
Former Solidarity activist Bronislaw Geremek was one of the architects of democratic change in Poland. He was advisor to the Interfactory Strike Committee at the Gdansk Shipyard (1980), and a founding member of Solidarity's Independent Self-Governing Trade Union (1980). Janusz Onyszkiewicz, vice president of the European Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee and the spokesman for the Solidarity movement in the 1980s met Bronislaw Geremek in 1981. The two politicians quickly became friends.
'He was a very warm person. We were invited to his flat here in Brussels once and I was absolutely amazed by the way he managed to approach our kids. But also, and that was quite a revelation, he really talked in a very competent way with my youngest son about Polish and world football which I would never suspect him of being interested in! I think we will miss him not only as a politician but also as a human being. He was pathologically of hatred. He could hate somebody's ideas but not a person. I think that his tremendous negotiating skills were shown when he actually managed to persuade communists to accept that the whole political system in Poland will be changed which resulted in the fall of communism in Poland and then in the whole Europe.'
Bronislaw Geremek died when the car in which he was travelling on Sunday suddenly crossed to the other side of the road before hitting an oncoming vehicle near the town of Lubien on the road from Warsaw to the German border. Autopsy has already been scheduled to help explain why the car left its side of the road and drifted over to the oncoming traffic lane.