Born 20th May 1981 in Szczecin, new Polish ambassador Rafał Paweł Perl graduated from the University of Szczecin’s Faculty of Political Sciences and completed the Diplomatic Academy of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (in 2005), postgraduate programme of European studies at the State School of PA and Strasbourg’s Centre for European Studies.

Employed at the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs since 2004, he was responsible for Poland’s relations with Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Albania and Macedonia from 2006 to 2011.

He served from 2011 to ’15 as counsellor for political issues and PR at the Polish Embassy in Washington, whilst also serving as the embassy’s acting spokesman. He has been the director of the Secretariat of the Minister of Foreign Affairs since March 2018. He was also of the Polish delegation of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) from 2016 to 2017. Awarded the Silver Cross for merits, he is fluent in English and French and able to communicate in Serbian. The father of one daughter, his wife Ana is also a diplomat.