[2][3] During his tenure as minister of the interior, Schäuble was one of the most popular politicians in Germany and was regularly mentioned as a possible future chancellor,[4] though he faced occasional criticism from civil rights activists for his law and order policies.

Described in this capacity as "Germany's second most powerful person" after Merkel,[7] he took a hard line toward Southern European countries during the eurozone crisis,[8] and rejected calls from the International Monetary Fund to give Greece more time to rein in deficits.

[9] A proponent of austerity policies, Schäuble's 2014 budget allowed Germany to take on no new debt for the first time since 1969,[10][11] which is generally known as Black Zero in CDU election campaigns.

[20] Schäuble has always been elected to the Bundestag by means of winning an electorate seat, rather than through a list placing in Germany's system of proportional political representation.

[29] Some quarters of the CDU and CSU wanted to put Schäuble forward as their candidate for the office of German President, the largely ceremonial head of state, at the beginning of March 2004, due to his extensive political experience.

Only 15 months later,[6] he resigned from this post as well as from the leadership of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in 2000 in the wake of the party financing scandal, over the acceptance of cash donation over DM 100,000 contributed by the arms dealer and lobbyist Karlheinz Schreiber back in 1994.

[33] Schäuble's resignation initiated a generational change among the Christian Democrats, with Angela Merkel taking over as CDU leader and Friedrich Merz as chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group.

[6][34][35] Ahead of the 2005 elections, Angela Merkel included Schäuble in her shadow cabinet for the Christian Democrats' campaign to unseat incumbent Gerhard Schröder as chancellor.

[37] In the subsequent negotiations to form a coalition government, he led the CDU/CSU delegation in the working group on interior policy; his co-chair from the SPD was Brigitte Zypries.

[8] In 2012, Schäuble rejected calls from the chairwoman of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, to give Greece more time to make additional spending cuts to rein in deficits.

[46] A leading advocate of austerity during the eurozone crisis,[10] Schäuble in 2014 pushed through a national budget of 299 billion euros that allowed Germany not to take on any new debt for the first time since 1969.

[49] Schäuble's reputation for tough control of spending has been helped by Germany's rapid recovery from recession but he has repeatedly rebuffed calls from government supporters for vote-winning tax cuts.

[51] In 2012, following the resignation of Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the 17 euro zone finance ministers, known as the Eurogroup, suggestions soon gathered pace that Chancellor Angela Merkel was pressing for Schäuble to take up the position;[25][45] the job later went to Jeroen Dijsselbloem instead.

In the negotiations to form a coalition government following the 2013 federal elections, he led the CDU/CSU delegation in the financial policy working group; his co-chair from the SPD was the Mayor of Hamburg, Olaf Scholz.

[53] In a letter to the European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs Pierre Moscovici in late 2014, Schäuble and the finance ministers of the eurozone's other big economies – Michel Sapin of France and Pier Carlo Padoan of Italy – urged the European Commission to draw up EU-wide laws to curb corporate tax avoidance and prevent member states from offering lower taxes to attract investors, calling for a comprehensive anti-BEPS (Base Erosion and Profit Shifting) directive for member states to adopt by the end of 2015.

[56] When Federal President Joachim Gauck announced in June 2016 that he would not stand for reelection, Schäuble was soon mentioned by German and international media as likely successor;[57][58] the post eventually went to Frank-Walter Steinmeier instead.

[59] From late 2016, Schäuble served as member of the German government's cabinet committee on Brexit at which ministers discuss organizational and structural issues related to the United Kingdom's departure from the European Union.

[61] In his capacity as president, he chaired the parliament's Council of Elders, which – among other duties – determines daily legislative agenda items and assigns committee chairpersons based on party representation.

[63] Ahead of the Christian Democrats' leadership election in 2018, Schäuble publicly endorsed Friedrich Merz to succeed Angela Merkel as the party's chair.

[65] Echoing earlier proposals made by Prime Minister Édouard Balladur of France, Schäuble and fellow lawmaker Karl Lamers in 1994 urged the European Union to adopt a policy they called "variable geometry" under which five countries most committed to integration – Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxemburg – would proceed swiftly toward monetary union, joint foreign and defense policies and other forms of integration.

[66] In 2014, both reiterated their ideas in an op-ed for the Financial Times, renewing their call for a core group of European Union countries to move ahead faster with economic and political integration.

[71] In 2015, Schäuble raised the idea of stripping the European Commission of regulatory powers, expressing concern over its neutrality and willingness to fulfil its role as "guardian of the treaties", in particular with regard to the enforcement of rules on budget discipline; unnamed diplomats were cited by Reuters as stating that this was not incompatible with his reputation as "a veteran pro-European who has long favored turning the Commission over time into a European 'government'".

[75] On 7 June 2011, he was among the guests invited to the state dinner hosted by President Barack Obama in honor of Chancellor Angela Merkel at the White House.

[79] Schäuble accused Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of lacking an appropriate historical conscience, because he accepted alleged human rights violations by the Russian government without criticism.

"Just as we used millions of refugees and expellees after World War Two to rebuild ... so we need immigration today", Schäuble told Bild when asked about the popularity of anti-immigration policies.

[89] Shortly after he assumed the position of Minister of the Interior, the 2006 German train bombing plot became the closest Germany is known to have come to a large-scale terrorist attack since 11 September 2001, and Schäuble publicly stated the country escaped that one only through luck.

[117][118] When Schäuble celebrated his 70th birthday at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin in September 2012, Chancellor Angela Merkel and Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, delivered the keynote speeches in his honor.

[119] On 12 October 1990, at the age of 48 and just after the reunification of Germany, Schäuble was the target of an assassination attempt by a mentally unwell drug user named Dieter Kaufmann.

[1] For his last rally in the 1990 elections, Chancellor Helmut Kohl travelled to Offenburg, where Schäuble made his first public appearance after the assassination attempt to a crowd of about 9,000.

[120] In May 2010, on his way to Brussels for an emergency meeting of European Union finance ministers, Schäuble found himself in the intensive care unit of a Belgian hospital, battling complications from an earlier operation and an allergic reaction to a new antibiotic.