(WARSAW) - Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk is a pro-European free marketeer who has earned the reputation of being an unflappable leader able to turn even the most difficult situations to his advantage.

With political roots in Poland's anti-communist Solidarity trade union, the football-mad historian set to be the EU's next president started out as an underground journalist.

Under communism, he also put his liberal ideals to work running a modest industrial painting business. Although private enterprise was rare, small ventures were tolerated by the ruling Communist Party.

After a bloodless end to communist rule was negotiated in Poland in 1989, Tusk and a group of friends in his Baltic Sea hometown of Gdansk founded the Liberal Democratic Congress, pushing for sweeping privatisation of the state-run economy.

It won 37 of the 460 seats in parliament in the 1991 general election, only to lose them two years later. It then merged with the larger centrist Freedom Union.

Tusk led a breakaway faction in 2001 and formed the Civic Platform (PO).

While his 2005 presidential bid failed, the PO took power after a 2007 snap election and Tusk was propelled to a second consecutive term as prime minister in the 2011 general election.

He has the distinction of steering Poland though the global financial crisis as the only EU state to maintain economic growth, although critics slam him for breaking promises on tax reform and cutting bureaucracy.

He also steadied the country in 2010 when an air crash in Russia wiped out a large chunk of the Polish establishment. Poland's then president Lech Kaczynski was killed as well as the country's top military brass, central bank chief and scores of lawmakers and other senior state figures.

- A savvy Kashubian -

The rest is here:
Tusk: unflappable Polish leader through crisis after crisis

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