David James McAllister (born 12 January 1971[1]) is a German politician who has been a member of the European Parliament since 2014.

Following his election as Minister-President, he was described as a rising star in the CDU and, at the time, as a potential successor to Angela Merkel.

His father, James Buchanan McAllister, who was originally from Glasgow (where the family still has relatives), was a British civil servant.

From 1969, James McAllister worked in West Berlin, while attached to the British Army's Royal Corps of Signals.

Since 2003, McAllister has served as the leader of the CDU parliamentary party group in the Parliament of Lower Saxony, of which he has been a member since 1998.

McAllister succeeded Christian Wulff as party chairman of the CDU in Lower Saxony from June 2008 until November 2016.

In 2005, Chancellor Angela 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.

[19] In this capacity, he co-chairs (alongside Joseph Daul), the EPP's Working Group on European Policy.

[22] Within his own political group, he has been co-chairing the EPP Foreign Affairs Ministers Meeting since 2017, alongside Simon Coveney.

[23] In the negotiations to form a coalition government following the 2017 federal elections, McAllister was part of the CDU/CSU delegation in the working group on European policy, led by Peter Altmaier, Alexander Dobrindt and Achim Post.

[24] Following Brexit, McAllister joined Manfred Weber, Esteban González Pons and Sandra Kalniete in co-signing a letter to President of the European Parliament David Sassoli to establish an EU-UK Joint Parliamentary Assembly.

[27] In 2021, he joined forces with Terry Reintke and Radosław Sikorski in initiating a letter of 145 member of the European Parliament to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Education Commissioner Mariya Gabriel in which they called for allowing Scotland and Wales to rejoin the European Union’s Erasmus+ mobility scheme.

[28] In a joint letter initiated by Norbert Röttgen and Anthony Gonzalez ahead of the 47th 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 including artificial intelligence and 5G.