 Schürer combined this responsibility with membership of the Politburo's Economics Commission.Further promotion followed in 1962 when he became deputy head of the .He took over leadership of the Planning Commission just three years later in 1965, when, according to Schürer, the incumbent, Erich Apel, shot himself after failing to win more than lukewarm support from Walter Ulbricht in the context of a trade and finance deal he was attempting to negotiate with the Soviets.