He held a number of important public functions in the country and abroad. In 1990 he became an advisor and consultant at the Ministry of Finance, followed by the Ministry of Ownership Transformations and the Central Planning Office. In the years 1994–1996 he was the vice-chairman of the Council of Socio-Economic Strategy at the Council of Ministers, and then economic advisor to the President of the Republic of Poland Aleksander Kwaśniewski. In 1996 he became a consultant at World Bank. He was twice the Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Poland and the Minister of Finance: in 1997 in the Cabinet of Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz and in 2001–2002 in the Cabinet of Leszek Miller. In 2004–2005 he served as Prime Minister and the chairman of the Committee for European Integration. In 2005 he held the office of the Minister of Sport in his own government .
From 2006 he served as the executive secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), and from November 2008 the director of the European Department International Monetary Fund. Previously, he was also the head of the coalition Council for International Coordination in Iraq (2003), and then the director of economic policy in the Provisional Coalition Authority in Iraq, where he answered, among others for currency reform, creation of a new banking system and supervision of the economy (2003-2004).
Belka graduated from the Socio-Economic Department of the University of Łódź in 1972 and later studied on scholarships at Columbia University, University of Chicago and London School of Economics. He holds an M.A. in economics of foreign trade and a PhD in economics from the University of Łódź;[4] his thesis was on US anti-inflationary policy.[5] He became a professor in 1994.
Later, Belka worked as an advisor to JP Morgan for Central and Eastern Europe from 2002 to 2003. In 2003 he was responsible for economic policy in the interim Coalition Provisional Authority of Iraq.
Belka was designated Prime Minister of Poland by President Aleksander Kwaśniewski on 29 May 2004 and sworn into office the next 8 August. He failed to receive the required parliamentary support on 14 August, but on 11 September he was designated again. On 24 October he finally managed to receive enough support in the Sejm – the Lower House of Polish Parliament – winning a vote of confidence by a majority of 235 votes to 215.
On 15 July 2008, Strauss-Kahn named Belka as Director of the IMF's European Department, a position Belka took up on 1 November 2008.[9][10] In this capacity, he led the fund's response to the global economic crisis in Europe.[11]
President of the National Bank of Poland, 2010–2016
Marek Belka during press conference after MPC decision-making meeting, 2013
In June 2014, the Polish magazine Wprost published a series of transcripts of secret recordings involving senior Polish government officials, including one in which Belka discussed the forthcoming 2015 election with the interior minister Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz.[13] Belka said he would not resign over the remarks he is alleged to have made. The secret recordings were believed to have been made in one or more restaurants in the capital, Warsaw, and thought to date back as far as Summer 2013.[14]
In 2016, news media reported that Belka was considering taking up the role of the head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).[15] He was also a member of the Eminent Persons Group on Global Financial Governance, which was established by the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors for the period from 2017 to 2018.[16]
In addition to his committee assignments, Belka is a member of the delegation for relations with the United States. He is also a member of the URBAN Intergroup.[18] In Elections to the European Parliament in 2024 he ran from the first place on the Left list in the Łódź constituency, without obtaining re-election as a member of parliament.[19]
^Easton, Adam (June 2014). On the recordings Belka was caught coordinating monetary policy with the current government, an act expressly forbidden by the Polish Constitution which mandates the NBP remain politically independent. "Poland bugging: The table talk that shook Warsaw", BBC News, 25 June 2014. Accessed 28 July 2014.
