World Rally Champion- turned- Lawmaker Becomes Member of The European Parliament
By Danuta Isler
Nov 22, 2007
Polish rally driver Krzysztof Holowczyc will replace Barbara Kudrycka as Member of the European Parliament with the Civic Platform (PO) party, as Kudrycka became Minister of Science and Higher Education in the new government formed by Donald Tusk. He is not the first Polish athlete to start a political career as there are ten people connected with sports in Poland’s newly elected Parliament.
45-year-old Krzysztof Holowczyc is a repeated Polish rally champion. In 1997 he won the European Rally Championships, he also drove in Paris-Dakar rally and in world championships.
Holowczyc announced that as an MEP first of all he wants to deal with the issue of road safety as well as take care of proper use of the European funds assigned to renovation of Polish roads.
‘As a person engaged in the struggle for safety on Polish roads this will be my direction. It was the main point of my campaign because I believe there is still so much to be done in the sphere of public safety. ‘
So what makes an athlete a successful politician in Poland? Professor Radoslaw Markowski points to two things.
‘The characteristics of politicians and athletes that is similar is, I would say, competitiveness. Their predominant drive is to win - either election or competition. And the second is fouls, you know, and unjust tricks are both present in politics and sports. ‘
Krzysztof Holowczyc will not be the only world rally champion-turned-lawmaker in the European Parliament. The first one was Ari Vatanen of Finland, world rally champion of 1981 who was first elected to the European Parliament in 1999 and then again in 2004.
