Polish Law and Justice Ex-Minister Lobbies for Hungary’s MOL
Tadeusz Michrowski (FRONTSTORY)
Photo: Gov.pl 2024-12-07
Tadeusz Michrowski (FRONTSTORY)
Photo: Gov.pl 2024-12-07
A high-ranking former Law and Justice (PiS) government official specializing in energy has registered as a lobbyist in Brussels. She works, among others, for Hungary’s MOL, VSquare and FRONTSTORY have found.
Anna Łukaszewska-Trzeciakowska built her career in the energy sector, including serving as the head of the Kozienice Power Plant. Although she gained experience in major companies, including heading the management board office at Bumar (a strategic Polish defense company) it was under PiS rule that her career truly took off. She spent a year as a director at Orlen, led by Daniel Obajtek as CEO at the time. Still, the highlight of her career came with her appointment as Undersecretary of State at the Ministry of Climate and Environment in 2022.
A year later, she was promoted to the position of Secretary of State in the Prime Minister’s Office and also appointed as the government’s plenipotentiary for strategic energy infrastructure. Over the past few years, including her time on the supervisory boards of state-owned companies, she has been involved in key energy projects, including investments in wind energy.
According to Gazeta Wyborcza, she was a close associate of Anna Moskwa, the Minister of Environment and Climate. At the end of 2023, Łukaszewska-Trzeciakowska briefly served as the Minister of Climate and Environment for two weeks in Mateusz Morawiecki’s controversial final PiS cabinet, just before Donald Tusk took office.
As we revealed in VSquare’s latest Goulash newsletter, since September, the former minister has been registered in Brussels as a lobbyist who also has accreditation to the European Parliament. She represents, among others, the Hungarian fuel giant MOL — a direct competitor of Orlen, which acquired Lotos gas stations after the merger of Polish companies.
In January 2022, MOL signed a deal with Orlen, acquiring 417 fuel stations previously owned by Lotos, while selling 185 stations in Hungary and Slovakia to Orlen.
A few weeks ago, Łukaszewska-Trzeciakowska attended MOL’s annual banquet at Brussels’ Bibliothèque Solvay, according to sources familiar with the event.
Can someone with such deep knowledge of strategic energy projects and critical infrastructure simply move on to work for a foreign investor? We reached out to Anna Łukaszewska-Trzeciakowska for comment. She responded:
“I am not employed by MOL. I provide specific advisory services to the company as an independent service provider under a contract as a separate entity (business activity). I provide similar services to other entities.”
According to the former minister, her lobbying for MOL focuses mainly on “the energy transition towards low- and zero-emission solutions.”
The Ministry of Climate and Environment, where Łukaszewska-Trzeciakowska served as a minister, claims to have no knowledge of her current work. However, they note that her responsibilities at the ministry included “a package of legal regulations aimed at countering the effects of the energy crisis caused by Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, including measures related to the energy market and the heating sector.”
The former minister’s new job isn’t a concern for the current government, but something else might be. MOL profits from trading Russian oil and lobbies in Brussels to maintain regulations allowing imports from Russia, particularly to Hungary.
We asked Łukaszewska-Trzeciakowska for her opinion on the issue of Russian gas supplies. She responded:
“I continue to believe that only complete independence from Russian fossil fuels will ensure long-term sovereignty and energy security for the EU. (…) However, technical limitations must be considered, particularly for landlocked countries (Czechia, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary) and the capacity of alternative transport methods.”
The controversial Orlen-Lotos merger, which allowed MOL to acquire the Polish fuel station network, has been under investigation by the Płock prosecutor’s office since June. Daniel Obajtek, Łukaszewska-Trzeciakowska’s former boss, publicly insists he has nothing to hide in this matter.
We reached out to MOL’s spokesperson but received to response.
The article’s Polish original was published on Gazeta.pl.
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VSquare’s Budapest-based lead investigative editor in charge of Central European investigations, Szabolcs Panyi is also a Hungarian investigative journalist at Direkt36. He covers national security, foreign policy, and Russian and Chinese influence. He was a European Press Prize finalist in 2018 and 2021.
Tadeusz Michrowski is an editor and fact-checker at VSquare and FRONTSTORY.PL. He is an award-winning journalist and writer.