David White is British from Northern Ireland. Born in 1947, he is married with three children.
After reading economics and politics at the Universities of Belfast, Manchester and London, he began his career in the UK Government Economic Service, where he worked on problems of employment, inflation and economic forecasting. In 1974 he moved to work with the European Commission where he occupied a number of posts. These have included reponsibilities in employment policy and coordination of legislation on budgetary, internal market, environmental and transport policy matters. From 1985-87 he was a Member of the Cabinet of Commission President Jacques Delors, reponsible for budgetary and Parliamentary matters. Since 1987, he was Head of the Public Procurement Policy Unit a position he held until 1993. From 1994 to 1999 White was Head of Unit for Regulatory Policy in the European Commission Directorate-General for Industry. He was subsequently made Director, first for Enterprise Policy (2000 - 2004), then for Innovation policy (2005 - 2006) and lastly for Lifelong Learning (2007 - 2008). He retired from the European Commission in 2008. From 2009 until the present he is Honorary Director General of the European Commission and simultaneously is a researcher at the Catholic University of Leuven.