David McAllister | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Chair of the European Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee | |
| Assumed office 1 February 2017 | |
| Preceded by | Elmar Brok |
| Member of the European Parliament | |
| Assumed office 1 July 2014 | |
| Constituency | Germany |
| Vice President of the European People's Party | |
| Assumed office 3 October 2015 | |
| President | Joseph Daul Donald Tusk |
| Preceded by | Michel Barnier |
| Minister-President of Lower Saxony | |
| In office 1 July 2010 – 19 February 2013 | |
| Deputy | Jörg Bode |
| Preceded by | Christian Wulff |
| Succeeded by | Stephan Weil |
| Chairman of the Christian Democratic Union of Lower Saxony | |
| In office 19 June 2008 – 12 November 2016 | |
| Preceded by | Christian Wulff |
| Succeeded by | Bernd Althusmann |
| Leader of theChristian Democratic Union in theLandtag of Lower Saxony | |
| In office 4 February 2003 – 1 July 2010 | |
| Preceded by | Christian Wulff |
| Succeeded by | Björn Thümler |
| Member of theLandtag of Lower Saxony for Hadeln/Wesermünde (Hadeln; 2003–2008) (CDU List; 1998–2003) | |
| In office 30 March 1998 – 26 March 2014 | |
| Preceded by | Birgit Meyn-Horeis |
| Succeeded by | Aygül Özkan |
| Personal details | |
| Born | David James McAllister (1971-01-12)12 January 1971 (age 55) West Berlin, West Germany |
| Citizenship | Germany United Kingdom |
| Party |  German:Christian Democratic Union  EU:European People's Party |
| Spouse | Dunja Kolleck |
| Children | 2 |
| Alma mater | Leibniz University Hannover |
| Website | mcallister |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance | Germany |
| Branch/service |  Bundeswehr |
| Years of service | 1989–1991 |
| Unit |  Army (Heer) / Panzerbataillon 74 |
David James McAllister (born 12 January 1971)[1] is a German politician who has been a member of theEuropean Parliament since 2014. He is a member of theChristian Democratic Union (CDU), part of theEuropean People's Party. He is the current vice president of theEuropean People's Party and he is also vice chairman of theInternational Democrat Union. He was appointedChair of the European Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee in February 2017.[2]
On 1 July 2010 McAllister was electedMinister-President of thestate ofLower Saxony,[3][4] succeedingChristian Wulff, who resigned following his election asPresident of Germany. Until his election defeat on 19 February 2013, he headed a coalition government with the liberalFDP, theCabinet McAllister. In the2014 European elections, McAllister was elected a Member of the European Parliament as the CDU's top candidate in Lower Saxony.[5]
A lawyer by profession, he served as chairman of the CDU parliamentary group in theLower Saxon Parliament from 2003 to 2010 and was elected chairman of the state party in 2008. In November 2016 he left the chairman post, and announced that he sees his political future in Europe. McAllister holds both German and British citizenship.
Following his election as Minister-President, he was described as a rising star in the CDU and, at the time, as a potential successor toAngela Merkel.[6] He has more recently been mentioned as a possible futureEuropean Commissioner,[7][8] however this became impossible when his countrywoman,Ursula von der Leyen, was electedPresident of the European Commission in2019 and2024.
McAllister was born inWest Berlin on 12 January 1971 to aScottish father and a German mother. His father, James Buchanan McAllister, who was originally fromGlasgow (where the family still has relatives), was a British civil servant. From 1969, James McAllister worked in West Berlin, while attached to theBritish Army'sRoyal Corps of Signals.
His mother, Mechthild McAllister, is a music teacher.
He was raised bilingually and attended a British primary school in Berlin.[9]
In a 2010 interview he linked his family's name toClan MacAlister.[10]
After his parents moved to the small town ofBad Bederkesa inLower Saxony in 1982, he went to the Lower SaxonyInternatsgymnasium (boarding school) in Bederkesa, where he took hisAbitur in 1989. From 1989-91, McAllister served hismilitary service in theBundeswehr, in Panzerbataillon 74 inCuxhaven. From 1991–96 he read Law with a scholarship from theKonrad Adenauer Foundation at theLeibniz University Hannover. In 1994, McAllister became local chairman of the CDU youth organisation,Junge Union, in theCuxhaven district.
McAllister holds both German and UK citizenship and fluently speaks both German and English, although he has stated that he's "more or less completely German. I've lived in Germany all my life. I did all my school in Germany and my military service in Germany."[11] His upbringing in West Berlin, however, he describes as "very British" with "British network, British schools". Holding dual citizenship, he could have relinquished his German citizenship to avoid compulsory military service in Germany (the UK abolished theirNational Service in 1960), but opted to serve instead.[12]
McAllister has said that "my upbringing in West Berlin may have had an impact on my resentment towards Communists. I became a member of the CDU when I was 17 – it was a birthday present. My parents said, 'What do you want for your birthday?’ I said I wanted to become a member of the CDU", explaining that his father was a conservative, although neither of his parents were involved in party politics.[11]
From 1996 till 2010, McAllister was a member of theCuxhaven district council (Kreistag). He served as mayor of his hometown of Bad Bederkesa from 2001 to 2002. From 2002 to 2003, he also wassecretary general of the CDU in Lower Saxony. Since 2003, McAllister has served as the leader of the CDU parliamentary party group in theParliament of Lower Saxony, of which he has been a member since 1998. McAllister succeededChristian Wulff as party chairman of the CDU in Lower Saxony from June 2008 until November 2016. He was succeeded byBernd Althusmann. In the United Kingdom, McAllister is a supporter of theConservative Party.
In 2005, ChancellorAngela Merkel offered him the position of Secretary General of the CDU, but McAllister declined, arguing he did not want to rise too far too fast.[13] He was a CDU delegate to theFederal Convention for the purpose of electing thePresident of Germany in 2004, 2009, 2010 and 2012.
On 4 June 2010, McAllister was designated by his party to succeedChristian Wulff as Minister-President of Lower Saxony, if the latter were to be electedPresident of Germany on 30 June. After the election of Wulff as president, David McAllister was elected the new Minister-President of Lower Saxony the following day. He was subsequently also appointed to thesupervisory board ofVolkswagen, the largest company in Lower Saxony and of which the state of Lower Saxony is a major stockholder.[14] From 2010 until 2013, he also served as a member of thesupervisory board ofVolkswagen.
In December 2012, McAllister presided over the CDU’s national convention inHanover.[15]
Following the2013 Lower Saxony state election, McAllister's CDU-FDP Coalition lost control of the Landtag, which meant that the Christian Democrats and the Free Democrats eventually lost the government role. On 19 February 2013,Stephan Weil of theSocial Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) was elected Minister-President of Lower Saxony with the votes of SPD andAlliance '90/The Greens.[16] He resigned in March 2014 to prepare for theEuropean parliament election, where he was the lead candidate for the CDU/CSU.
Following the2013 German elections, McAllister was part of the CDU/CSU team in the negotiations with the SPD on a coalition agreement.
As a Member of the European Parliament, McAllister serves as chairman of the Delegation for Relations with the United States and as member of theCommittee on Foreign Affairs. In this capacity, he is the parliament's rapporteur onSerbia.[17] In addition, he is a member of the European Parliament Intergroup on SMEs.[18]
He became vice chairman of theInternational Democrat Union in 2014. In October 2015 he was elected vice president of theEuropean People's Party.[19] In this capacity, he co-chairs (alongsideJoseph Daul), the EPP's Working Group on European Policy.[20]
Since 2017, McAllister has been serving as chairman of theCommittee on Foreign Affairs, followingElmar Brok.[21] In this capacity, he also co-chairs – first alongsideLinda McAvan (2017-2019), laterTomas Tobé (since 2019) – the Democracy Support and Election Coordination Group (DEG), which oversees the Parliament's election observation missions.[22] Within his own political group, he has been co-chairing theEPP Foreign Affairs Ministers Meeting since 2017, alongsideSimon Coveney.[23]
In the negotiations to form acoalition government following the2017 federal elections, McAllister was part of the CDU/CSU delegation in the working group on European policy, led byPeter Altmaier,Alexander Dobrindt andAchim Post.
Following the2019 elections, McAllister was part of a cross-party working group in charge of drafting the European Parliament's four-year work program on foreign policy.[24]
Following Brexit, McAllister joinedManfred Weber,Esteban González Pons andSandra Kalniete in co-signing a letter toPresident of the European ParliamentDavid Sassoli to establish an EU-UK Joint Parliamentary Assembly.[27] In 2021, he joined forces withTerry Reintke andRadosław Sikorski in initiating a letter of 145 member of the European Parliament toCommission PresidentUrsula von der Leyen andEducation CommissionerMariya Gabriel in which they called for allowing Scotland and Wales to rejoin the European Union’sErasmus+ mobility scheme.[28]
In a joint letter initiated byNorbert Röttgen andAnthony Gonzalez ahead of the47th G7 summit in 2021, McAllister joined some 70 legislators from Europe, the US and Japan in calling upon their leaders to take a tough stance on China and to "avoid becoming dependent" on the country for technology includingartificial intelligence and5G.[29]
McAllister is married to Dunja McAllister, née Kolleck, who is also a lawyer. He lives inBad Bederkesa in the district of Cuxhaven.[30] He supportsRangers FC andHannover 96.[31]
| Political offices | ||
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| Preceded by | Chairman of theChristian Democratic Union in theLandtag of Lower Saxony 2003–2010 | Succeeded by |
| Prime Minister of Lower Saxony 2010–2013 | Succeeded by | |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Chairman ofChristian Democratic Union ofLower Saxony 2008–2016 | Succeeded by |
| International | |
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| National | |
| People | |
