by Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg and Rainer Brüderle. In 2010, news media reported that Michael Kretschmer, the CDU’s general secretary in Saxony, had offered personal meetings with Tillich in exchange for party donations worth €500 to €8,000, or about $680 to $10,900. From 2010, Tillich was a member of the Christian Democratic Union's 20-strong executive board. By 2012, opinion polls put the backing of Tillich's CDU at 44 percent, at the time the highest level of support in any of the 16 German federal states; this made commentators describe him as “Germany’s second most-powerful politician from the formerly Communist East“ after Chancellor Angela Merkel. Tillich participated in the exploratory talks between the CDU, CSU and SPD parties to form a coalition government under Merkel following the 2013 federal elections. Tillich won reelection in the 2014 state elections. Ahead of the elections, he had soon put an end to speculation that he might team up with the newly founded AfD, which the CDU instead attempted to characterize as a fringe movement that flirts with the far right. At the time, Saxony was the first of three eastern regions to hold elections in a two-week span, with Brandenburg and Thuringia later rounding off the first set of electoral since Merkel won a third term. As one of Saxony's representatives at the Bundesrat, Tillich served as chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs from October 2016. In addition, he was a member of the German-Russian Friendship Group set up in cooperation with Russia's Federation Council. When the AfD overtook the CDU for the first time to emerge as Saxony's most popular party in the 2017 national elections, Tillich resigned and Michael Kretschmer took over. In 2017, Tillich said that the "People want Germany to stay Germany,". Life after politics From 2018 until 2019, Tillich co-chaired the German government's so-called coal commission, which was tasked to develop a masterplan before the end of the year on how to phase-out coal and create a new economic perspective for the country's coal-mining regions. Tillich was nominated by his party as delegate to the Federal Convention for the purpose of electing the President of Germany in 2022. Other activities Corporate boards Mitteldeutsche Braunkohlengesellschaft (MIBRAG), chairman of the supervisory board (since 2019) Volga-Dnepr Airlines, Advisor (since 2019) Non-profit organizations ZDF, deputy chairman of the board of directors Committee for the preparation of the Reformation anniversary 2017, ex officio member