History
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was first established, with Leon Wasilewski as its secretary, under the authority of the Regency Council when Poland regained (albeit in name only) its independence from the occupying German forces in the First World War. However, the ministry began to fulfil its ascribed duties truly only after the fall of the Regency Council, adoption of the Treaty of Versailles and the rise to power of Józef Piłsudski. The ministry was then, until 1939, located in central Warsaw, with its seat in the Brühl Palace on Piłsudski Square. During the Second World War, the ministry was evacuated, along with the rest of the Polish government, first to France and then onwards to London, where it formed part of the Polish government in exile. During this period Count Edward Raczyński, a man who was later to become President of the government in exile, was the minister responsible. After 1945, when most countries began to afford diplomatic regocnition to the new communist government in Warsaw, at the expense of the government in exile, the authorities of the new People's Republic of Poland refounded the ministry and appointed, as its first minister, Edward Osóbka-Morawski.
Since 1989 and the establishment of the Third Republic, the ministry and its staff have been located in a complex of buildings on Aleje Szucha in central Warsaw, not far displaced from the Chancellery of the Prime Minister.
The current minister of foreign affairs is Radosław Sikorski, a career politician educated at the University of Oxford, who was previously Minister for National Defence, and who has in the past served as both a member of the Sejm and the Senat.
Read more about this topic: Ministry Of Foreign Affairs (Poland)
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