Following the federal election , which his party lost, and after three weeks of negotiations, he stood down as chancellor in favour of Angela Merkel of the rival Christian Democratic Union.
He was chairman of the board of Nord Stream AG and of Rosneft but in resigned from the latter and opted not to join the board of Russian state-run gas company Gazprom. He also had roles as a global manager for investment bank Rothschild , and as chairman of the board of football club Hannover He did not have to do military service because his father had died in the war.
In , he passed his second law examination, and he subsequently worked as a lawyer until He also became chairman of the SPD Hanover district. In and , he served as President of the Bundesrat.
The following year, he nationalized a big steel mill in Lower Saxony to preserve jobs. Throughout his campaign for chancellor, he portrayed himself as a pragmatic new Social Democrat who would promote economic growth while strengthening Germany's generous social welfare system. In April , in Germany's first session in the restored Reichstag, to applause he quoted Albanian writer Ismail Kadare , saying: "The Balkans is the yard of the European house, and in no house can peace prevail so long as people kill each other in its yard.
Titled "Europe: The Third Way", [ 18 ] or "Die Neue Mitte" in German, it called on Europe's centre-left governments to cut taxes, pursue labour and welfare reforms and encourage entrepreneurship. The joint paper said European governments needed to adopt a "supply-side agenda" to respond to globalisation, the demands of capital markets and technological change. Instead, the paper took part of the blame for a succession of six German state election losses in for the Social Democratic Party.
