Jerzy Buzek others. From 1997 to 2001, Buzek was a coalition Prime Minister of Poland. In 1998 he became the first laureate of the Grzegorz Palka Award and was nominated "European of the Year" by the European Union Business Chambers Forum. In 1998 he was named 'Person of the Year' by the influential Polish political weekly "Wprost". He won the award for a second time in 2009. On receiving the award again, as President of the European Parliament, he stressed that he was the first winner to be honoured for his work beyond the borders of Poland. He was the first Prime
European Commissioner openly gay Commissioner. The first female Commissioners were Christiane Scrivener and Vasso Papandreou in the 1989 Delors Commission. European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek proposed in 2010 that Commissioners be directly elected, by member states placing their candidate at the top of their voting lists in European elections. That would give them individually, and the body as a whole, a democratic mandate. Each Member is required to take an oath before the Court of Justice of the European Union, officially the "Solemn Declaration before the Court of Justice of the European Union". As of December 2009, the Charter of Fundamental Rights