Under the leadership of party chairwoman Angela Merkel, Schavan was re-elected vice-chairwoman of the CDU in November 2006, this time alongside minister-presidents Roland Koch, Jürgen Rüttgers and Christian Wulff.

[7] On the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of the diplomatic relations between Germany and India, Schavan participated in the first joint cabinet meeting of the two countries' governments in Delhi in May 2011.

[9] In 2017, Schavan was one of the candidates considered to succeed Hans-Gert Pöttering as chair of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS) until she withdrew herself from consideration; instead, the role went to Norbert Lammert.

[10][11] In April 2023, Schavan was one of the 22 personal guests at the ceremony in which Angela Merkel was decorated with the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit for special achievement by President Frank-Walter Steinmeier at Schloss Bellevue in Berlin.

[12] Amid the plagiarism scandal that led to the resignation of Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg as Minister of Defence of Germany on 1 March 2011, Schavan was quoted in Der Spiegel as saying that "intellectual theft is not a small thing".

Investigators found paraphrasing of secondary literature without naming the source in over 60 cases in the dissertation and thereby on 5 February 2013 revoked her doctorate degree because of "systematic and premeditated" deception.

[32] Ahead of the Christian Democrats' leadership election in 2018, Schavan publicly endorsed Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer to succeed Angela Merkel as the party's chair.