As a journalist, he challenged the legality of the re-election of Donald Tusk as head of the European Council. Half a year later he became deputy minister of foreign affairs for legal and treaty matters. His publications were quoted by Witold Waszczykowski as an example of a legal expert opinion supporting the claim that there were irregularities in the vote taken in Brussels on 9 March 2016. On Tuesday, Jacek Czaputowicz became minister of foreign affairs in the government of Mateusz Morawiecki.
People like him are often praised for their active opposition to the communist regime. He was put under surveillance and investigated by the Security Service in consequence of his association with the Workers' Defence Committee (KOR), his role in the Independent Students' Association, and his leadership of the Freedom and Peace movement (WiP). After the restoration of Poland's independence, he relied on this experiences to work for the country. After 1989, he was the director of a department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the head of the Diplomatic Academy, deputy head of the Civil Service Council, and the director of the National School of Public Administration.
When Jacek Czaputowicz assumed the post of deputy minister of foreign affairs last September, the Freedom and Peace Foundation, dedicated to preserving the memory of this movement, issued a statement, in which it expressed regret that “the biography fails to mention his work as member of the Freedom and Peace movement in the second half of the 1980s.”
Indeed, the note published on the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs omits this period in the life of the former deputy minister. Perhaps because some of the members of WiP are now engaged in a bitter political dispute. Suffice it to say that WiP activists included Jacek Czaputowicz and Konstanty Radziwiłł (ministers in the PiS government), as well as Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz and Bogdan Klich (ministers in the PO government). Many other well-known individuals were associated with WiP, but just these four names are a testimony to the extent to which the paths of former friends, united by a common enemy before 1989, have now diverged.
The Freedom and Peace movement was the last organisation, in which Jacek Czaputowicz was an activist of the anti-communist opposition. WiP existed during the final years of the communist regime, from 1985 to 1987. However, Jacek Czaputowicz's activism began much earlier.
“Investigated [by Służba Bezpieczeństwa, the Security Service under the communist regime] after his detention on 18 December 1979, as he distributed leaflets announcing a Holy Mass for the workers killed in the 1970 demonstrations in northern Poland, and after reports had been obtained by the SB of his «open opposition to the political line of the party and the government» at his workplace, and suspicions that he «may be assisting in the operation of communication channels through Poland between anti-socialist groups in Czechoslovakia and the USSR». After 14 copies of the underground publication 'Robotnik; had been found on him, he was detained for 48 hours on 29 February 1980, and was given a warning,” reads the description of the archival material preserved by the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), consisting of documents collected by the communist Secret Service against Czaputowicz.
When he was imprisoned in what the authorities called a “detention centre” under martial law, SB attempted to coerce him to become an informer. However, he refused to talk to the officers. Czaputowicz was interned, because he founded and worked for independent student organisations, opposed to the authorities. Another fragment of the IPN material reads:
“In May 1980, he was one of the organisers of the Academic Intervention Bureau of the Students' Solidarity Committee (SKS), and in September he co-founded the Independent Students' Association, becoming a member of the National Founding Committee. He was interned after the imposition of martial law. According to a note in his file, the Secret Service unsuccessfully tried to turn him into an informer on 28 April, 21 May and 26 June 1982. Each time, he refused to talk to the officers. SB reported that after his release from internment, Czaputowicz maintained regular contacts with individuals 'known for their anti-socialist views'.”
When he joined the Freedom and Peace movement (WiP) in 1985, Czaputowicz was still under SB surveillance. According to IPN materials, the objective was to “control and limit anti-state and anti-socialist activities” of WiP, of which Czaputowicz soon became a leader. Numerous reports filed by regional SB units on the operations of the movement have been preserved in his files.
WiP was an interesting organisation, which combined opposition to the communist regime with the advocacy of pacifist ideas. WiP members protested against the construction of a nuclear power plant in Żarnowiec and a river dam in Czorsztyn, demanded the abolition of the death penalty, the shortening of compulsory military service, and the creation of alternative opportunities for conscientious objectors to serve their country in hospitals and social welfare institutions.
Czaputowicz was imprisoned for the second time (together with Piotr Niemczyk) for his WiP activism. He was held without trial for seven months. Niemczyk and Czaputowicz were never sentenced for their role as leaders of an illegal organisation. The Supreme Court's Military Chamber dropped the case at the request of the Attorney General and under pressure of international public opinion, including an Amnesty International letter-sending campaign. They were both released after this ruling.
WiP, in which Czaputowicz was responsible for international cooperation, advocated the idea of political disarmament as a way of removing the causes of international conflicts, rather than mere reduction of arsenals in the technical sense.
“It is time that in the face of the ineffectiveness of actions taken by governments, the nations of the East and West, which are to confront one another in a potential war, should begin to act so as to create a dialogue and mutual understanding,” declared WiP in its charter.
At a press conference held for Western journalists in January 1986 at Jacek Kuroń's apartment in Warsaw's district of Żoliborz, Jacek Czaputowicz and Jarema Dubiel (leader of various environmental NGOs after the restoration of Poland's independence) presented a vision of peace between the two sides separated by the iron curtain.
A year later, on the initiative of Czaputowicz (among others), WiP organized an independent seminar on international peace and the Helsinki agreements, a very unusual event in Poland under the totalitarian regime, which strongly opposed all independent initiatives outside the control of the authorities. Meanwhile, on 7 May, 200 visitors from Poland and 50 from other countries, including members of the West German Green Party and the US Campaign for Peace and Democracy, assembled at the presbytery of the Church of Divine Mercy on ul. Żytnia in Warsaw.
The seminar could not be attended by Hungarian freedom activists, as the communist authorities of their country refused to issue passports, preventing them from travelling to Poland. Therefore, they organised a similar seminar in Hungary, in November 1987. Jacek Czaputowicz represented WiP at the seminar, inaugurated by Victor Orban, a newly graduated law student of the University of Budapest.
Thus, the new Minister of Foreign Affairs has personally known the current Hungarian Prime Minister – considered to be Poland's sole ally in the country's dispute with the European Union over the interpretation of the rule of law in internal affairs – for thirty years.
The Security Service discontinued its surveillance of Jacek Czaputowicz on 8 May 1990 “upon the termination of the purpose, for which the operation was initiated and pursued.”
When Tadeusz Mazowiecki was prime minister, Czaputowicz became the director of a department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
He was invited to the office building on al. Szucha by professor Krzysztof Skubiszewski, who at the time was trying to gather a team of young scientists and Komitet Obywatelski activists at the Ministry. Initially, Jacek Czaputowicz became deputy director, and then director of departments of Consular Affairs and the Diaspora. He was responsible for the reform of the consular service and for the reconstruction of relations with Polish organisations around the world. He left the Ministry of Foreign Affairs after two years of service.
After a break lasting several years, he returned to public administration and in 1998 became the deputy head of the Civil Service under Jan Pastwa. After eight years at the Civil Service, Czaputowicz returned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as director of the Department of Foreign Policy Strategy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he was responsible for long-term strategy of Poland's foreign policy.
In 2008, Prime Minister Donald Tusk entrusted him with managing the National School of Public Administration. When dark clouds gathered over the university – in 2012, a report prepared by the Chancellery of the Prime Minister questioned the purpose of the school's continued existence – he defended it. However, he resigned in October 2012 to protest against the cutting of government subsidies to the school. He was replaced by his former boss in Civil Service, Jan Pastwa.
Jacek Czaputowicz graduated from the Central School of Planning and Statistics (currently the Warsaw School of Economics). He devoted his doctoral and habilitation theses to international relations. From 2016 he has been professor of social science. He received his professorial nomination from President Andrzej Duda.
At the time when the PiS government and its political backers did all in their power to prevent Donald Tusk from becoming the head of the European Council for the second term, Jacek Czaputowicz was head of the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. After the European Council re-appointed Tusk, with Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydło casting the only vote against his candidacy, Czaputowicz published an article in the Do Rzeczy weekly magazine, arguing that the choice could be challenged on the ground of European law.
The author pointed out that Tusk was elected not by an unequivocal vote for his candidacy, but because no objection was raised (except by the Polish Prime Minister). “Democracy requires that the candidate should get an explicit and unequivocal, rather than implicit vote. (...) The manner in which the president of the European Council was selected may indicate that no state was willing to take responsibility for putting forward Donald Tusk's candidacy against Poland's opposition. There was an awareness of the fact that this would be a violation of the prevailing rules,” wrote Czaputowicz.
On the day Czaputowicz's article appeared, that is, on 27 March 2017, the Minister of Foreign Affairs announced on TVN24 that Tusk's election “amounted to a falsification”.
“Today we can point to expert opinion, which shows that Tusk was elected in a manner that can be challenged at the level of European law,” said Waszczykowski in a “One-on-one” interview for TVN24.
That statement of the Minister of Foreign Affairs caused a political storm and provoked demands that the Minister disclose the expert opinion. Waszczykowski never released any such document. He did not even disclose the name of its author. With one exception. He said that he based his claim of the illegality of Tusk's election on professor Jacek Czaputowicz's article published in Do Rzeczy. Half a year later, in September 2017, Prime Minister Beata Szydło appointed Czaputowicz to the post of Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, in charge of legal and treaty matters.
Źródło: tvn24.pl/tłumaczenie Intertext.com.pl