Peter Altmaier was born in Ensdorf, Saarland, on 18 June 1958. He has held the office of Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of the Interior since November 2005 and has been a member of the German Bundestag since November 1994.

After working as a civil servant for the European Commission from 1990 to 1994, among others as Secretary-General of the Administrative Commission of the European Communities on Social Security for Migrant Workers, he was elected to the Bundestag in 1994.

From 1994 to 1998, Mr Altmaier served on the Committee on Legal Affairs; from 1998 to 2000 he chaired that committee’s Subcommittee on European Law, and he served on the Committee on European Union Affairs from 1994 to 2005.

Mr Altmaier served as an alternate to the EU Convention on the Charter of Human Rights in 1999-2000 and to the European Constitutional Treaty Convention in 2002-2003. From 2004 to 2005 he was the legal adviser to the CDU/CSU Parliamentary Group and has been a member of the Executive Committee of the CDU/CSU Parliamentary Group since 2002.

Mr Altmaier chaired the German Society for Foreign Affairs study group on European policy from 2003 to 2006 and has been the president of the Europa-Union Deutschland since 2006.