Stoiber attended the Ignaz-Günther-Gymnasium in Rosenheim, where he received his Abitur (high school diploma) in 1961, although he had to repeat one year for failing in Latin. His military service was with the 1st Gebirgsdivision (mountain infantry division) in Mittenwald and Bad Reichenhall and was cut-short due to a knee injury. Then Stoiber studied at Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich political science and then, from fall 1962, law. In 1967, he passed the state law exam and then worked at the University of Regensburg in criminal law and Eastern European law. He was awarded a doctorate of jurisprudence, and then in 1971 passed the second state examination with distinction.

In 1971, Stoiber joined the Bavarian State Ministry of Development and Environment.

Edmund Stoiber was born in Oberaudorf in the district of Rosenheim, Bavaria. Prior to entering politics in 1974 and serving in the Bavarian parliament, he was a lawyer and worked at the University of Regensburg.

In 1978 Stoiber was elected secretary general of the CSU, a post he held until 1982/83. In this capacity, he served as campaign manager of Franz-Josef Strauss, the first Bavarian leader to run for the chancellorship, in the 1980 national elections. From 1982 to 1986 he served as deputy to the Bavarian secretary of the state and then, in the position of State Minister, led the State Chancellery from 1982 to 1988. From 1988 to 1993 he served as State Minister of the Interior.

In May 1993, the Landtag of Bavaria, the state’s parliament, elected Stoiber as Minister-President succeeding Max Streibl. He came to power amid a political crisis involving a sex scandal, surrounding a contender for the state premiership. Upon taking office, he nominated Strauss’ daughter Monika Hohlmeier as State Minister for Education and Cultural Affairs.

At the same time, Stoiber has repeatedly insisted he is a “good European” who is keen, for instance, on forging an EU-wide foreign policy, replete with a single European army. Earlier, in 1993, he had told German newspapers: “I want a simple confederation. That means the nation-states maintain their dominant role, at least as far as internal matters are concerned.”

When Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court decided in 1995 that a Bavarian law requiring a crucifix to be hung in each of the state’s 40,000 classrooms was unconstitutional, Stoiber said he would not order the removal of crucifixes “for the time being,” and asserted that he was under no obligation to remove them in schools where parents unanimously opposed such action.

Stoiber has been a staunch advocate of changes in German law that would give more power to owners of private TV channels. In 1995, he publicly called for the abolition of Germany’s public television service ARD and a streamlining of its regional services, adding that he and Minister-President Kurt Biedenkopf of Saxony would break the contract ARD has with regional governments if reforms were not undertaken. However, when European Commissioner for Competition Karel van Miert unveiled ideas for reforming the rules governing the financing of public service broadcasters in 1998, Stoiber led the way in rejecting moves to reform established practice.

Stoiber has been said to be skeptical of Germany’s decision to adopt the euro. In 1997, he joined the ministers-president of two other German states, Kurt Biedenkopf and Gerhard Schröder, in making the case for a five-year delay in Europe’s currency union. When the European Commission recommended that Greece be allowed to join the eurozone in 1998, he demanded that the country be barred from adopting the common currency for several years instead. He is a staunch opponent of Turkey’s integration into the European Union, claiming that its non-Christian culture would dilute the Union.

In his capacity as Minister-President, Stoiber served as President of the Bundesrat in 1995/96. In 1998, he also succeeded Theo Waigel as chairman of the CSU.

In 2002, Stoiber politically outmaneuvered CDU chairwoman, Angela Merkel, and was declared the CDU/CSU’s candidate for the office of chancellor by practically the entire leadership of the CSU’s sister party CDU, challenging Gerhard Schröder. At that time, Merkel had generally been seen as a transitional chair and was strongly opposed by the CDU’s male leaders, often called the party’s “crown princes”.

In 2002, Stoiber publicly expressed support for the United States in their policy toward Iraq. During his election campaign, he made clear his opposition to war, and his support for the introduction of weapons inspectors to Iraq without preconditions as a way of avoiding war, and he criticized Schröder for harming the German-American alliance by not calling President George W. Bush and discussing the issue privately. He also attacked German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer for his criticism of the U.S. position.

During his 2002 election campaign, Stoiber indicated he would not ban same-sex marriages – sanctioned by the Schröder government – a policy he had vehemently objected to when it was introduced.

Stoiber subsequently led the CSU to an absolute majority in the 2003 Bavarian state elections, for the third time in a row, winning this time 60.7% of the votes and a two-thirds majority in the Landtag. This was the widest margin ever achieved by a German party in any state.

Between 2003 and 2004, Stoiber served as co-chair (alongside Franz Müntefering) of the First Commission on the modernization of the federal state (Föderalismuskommission I), which had been established to reform the division of powers between federal and state authorities in Germany. In February 2004, he became a candidate of Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder for the presidency of the European Commission but he decided not to run for this office.

Stoiber had ambitions to run again for the chancellorship, but Merkel secured the nomination, and in November 2005 she won the general election. He was slated to join Merkel’s first grand coalition cabinet as Economics minister. However, on 1 November 2005, he announced his decision to stay in Bavaria, due to personnel changes on the SPD side of the coalition (Franz Müntefering resigned as SPD chairman) and an unsatisfactory apportionment of competences between himself and designated Science minister Annette Schavan. Stoiber also resigned his seat in the 16th Bundestag, being a member from 18 October to 8 November.

In 2005, Stoiber successfully lobbied Novartis, the Swiss pharmaceuticals group, to move the headquarters of its Sandoz subsidiary to Munich, making it one of Europe’s highest-profile corporate relocations that year as well as a significant boost to Stoiber’s attempts to build up Bavaria as a pharmaceuticals and biotechnology center.

During the run-up to the German general election in 2005, which was held ahead of schedule, Stoiber created controversy through a campaign speech held in the beginning of August 2005 in the federal state of Baden-Württemberg. He said, “I do not accept that the East [of Germany] will again decide who will be Germany’s chancellor. It cannot be allowed that the frustrated determine Germany’s fate.” People in the new federal states of Germany (the former German Democratic Republic) were offended by Stoiber’s remarks. While the CSU attempted to portray them as “misinterpreted”, Stoiber created further controversy when he claimed that “if it was like Bavaria everywhere, there wouldn’t be any problems. Unfortunately, not everyone in Germany is as intelligent as in Bavaria.” The tone of the comments was exacerbated by a perception by some within Germany of the state of Bavaria as “arrogant”.

Many, including members of the CDU, attribute Stoiber’s comments and behavior as a contributing factor to the CDU’s losses in the 2005 general election. He was accused by many in the CDU/CSU of offering “half-hearted” support to Angela Merkel, with some even accusing him of being reluctant to support a female candidate from the East. (This also contrasted unfavorably with Merkel’s robust support for his candidacy in the 2002 election.) He has insinuated that votes were lost because of the choice of a female candidate. He came under heavy fire for these comments from press and politicians alike, especially since he himself lost almost 10% of the Bavarian vote – a dubious feat in itself as Bavarians tend to consistently vote conservatively. Nonetheless, a poll has suggested over 9% may have voted differently if the conservative candidate was a man from the West, although this does not clearly show if such a candidate would have gained or lost votes for the conservatives.

Subsequently, criticism grew in the CSU, where other politicians had to scale back their ambitions after Stoiber’s decision to stay in Bavaria. On 18 January 2007, he announced his decision to stand down from the posts of minister-president and party chairman by 30 September. Günther Beckstein, then Bavarian state minister of the interior, succeeded him as minister-president and Erwin Huber as party chairman, defeating Horst Seehofer at a convention at 18 September 2007 with 58,1% of the votes. Both Beckstein and Huber resigned after the 2008 state elections, in which the CSU vote dropped to 43,4% and the party had to form a coalition with another party for the first time since 1966.

Stoiber was first appointed in 2007 as a special adviser to then-European Commission President José Manuel Barroso to chair the “High level group on administrative burdens,” made up of national experts, NGOs, business and industry organizations. Quickly nicknamed the “Stoiber Group,” it produced a report in July 2014 with several proposals on streamlining the regulatory process. Stoiber was re-appointed in December 2014 by Jean-Claude Juncker to the same role, from which he resigned after one year in late 2015.

Since his retirement from German politics in 2007, Stoiber has worked as a lawyer and held paid and unpaid positions, including:

During his time as Minister-President of Bavaria, Stoiber pushed for the construction of a roughly 40-kilometer high-speed magnetic-levitation link from Munich’s main station to its airport, to be built by Transrapid International, a consortium including ThyssenKrupp and Munich-based Siemens. After he left office, the German federal government abandoned the plans in 2008 because of spiraling costs of as much as €3.4 billion.

In September 2015, Emily O’Reilly, the European Ombudsman, received a complaint from two NGOs, Corporate Europe Observatory and Friends of the Earth, according to which Stoiber’s appointment as special adviser on the Commission’s better regulation agenda broke internal rules on appointments.

Stoiber was a CSU delegate to the Federal Convention for the purpose of electing the President of Germany in 2017.