Editing Edmund Stoiber (section)

===Later political career===
Stoiber subsequently led the CSU to an absolute majority in the [[2003 Bavarian state election]]s, for the third time in a row, winning this time 60.7% of the votes and a two-thirds majority in the Landtag. This was the widest margin ever achieved by a German party in any state.<ref>Mark Landler (23 September 2002), [https://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/23/world/again-bavaria-s-favorite-is-germany-s-runner-up.html Again, Bavaria's Favorite Is Germany's Runner-Up] ''[[The New York Times]]''.</ref>

Between 2003 and 2004, Stoiber served as co-chair (alongside [[Franz Müntefering]]) of the [[Federalism commission (Germany)|First Commission on the modernization of the federal state]] (''Föderalismuskommission I''), which had been established to reform the division of powers between federal and state authorities in Germany. In February 2004, he became a candidate of [[Jacques Chirac]] and [[Gerhard Schröder]] for the presidency of the [[European Commission]] but he decided not to run for this office.<ref>[http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c8549db8-ba7a-11d8-9a2f-00000e2511c8.html Overture over for staunch Stoiber] ''[[Financial Times]]'', 10 June 2004.</ref>

Stoiber had ambitions to run again for the chancellorship, but Merkel secured the nomination, and in November 2005 she won the general election. He was slated to join Merkel's first grand coalition cabinet as [[Federal Minister for Economics and Labour (Germany)|Economics minister]]. However, on 1 November 2005, he announced his decision to stay in Bavaria, due to personnel changes on the SPD side of the coalition ([[Franz Müntefering]] resigned as SPD chairman) and an unsatisfactory apportionment of competences between himself and designated Science minister [[Annette Schavan]]. Stoiber also resigned his seat in the 16th Bundestag, being a member from 18 October to 8 November.

Subsequently, criticism grew in the CSU, where other politicians had to scale back their ambitions after Stoiber's decision to stay in Bavaria. On 18 January 2007, he announced his decision to stand down from the posts of minister-president and party chairman by 30 September. [[Günther Beckstein]], then Bavarian state minister of the interior, succeeded him as minister-president and [[Erwin Huber]] as party chairman, defeating [[Horst Seehofer]] at a convention at 18 September 2007 with 58,1% of the votes. Both Beckstein and Huber resigned after the [[2008 Bavarian state election|2008 state elections]], in which the CSU vote dropped to 43,4% and the party had to form a coalition with another party for the first time since 1966.