Valdemar Tomaševski

Who is Valdemar Tomaševski?

Valdemar Tomaševski, rendered in Polish orthography as Waldemar Tomaszewski, is a Lithuanian politician of Polish descent and Member of the European Parliament. Leader of the Electoral Action of Poles in Lithuania, Tomaševski has been an MEP since 2009. He sits in the European Conservatives and Reformists group, of which he is a Member of the Bureau on the group executive.

First elected to Vilnius district council for Electoral Action in 1995, Tomaševski was elected President of AWPL in 1999. He was first elected to the Seimas at the 2000 election, winning 51% of the vote in Šalčininkai. In the same year, he became deputy mayor of Vilnius district, serving from 2000 to 2003. Finding himself as one of only two AWPL members in the Seimas, during the parliamentary term, he moved between factions, including Homeland Union and Order and Justice.

Tomaševski was re-elected to the Seimas in 2004 with 63% of the vote: one of five candidates in the country elected in the first round. He was re-elected again at the 2008 election, winning 61%: eight times his nearest competitor's share. He was AWPL's candidate in the May 2009 presidential election, the first that AWPL had entered, and received 4.7% of the national vote, in fourth, with Dalia Grybauskaite winning comfortably.