In 2016, Waigel was appointed by Chancellor Angela Merkel to a three-member panel to oversee the implementation of a new law designed to avoid potential conflicts of interest, requiring senior German officials from the chancellor to deputy ministers to observe a cooling-off period if they want to quit the government for a job in business. Alongside David Gold, Baron Gold and Noëlle Lenoir, he was later appointed by Airbus to an Independent Compliance Review Panel (ICRP) in 2017, amid investigations by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and the Parquet national financier (PNF) into allegations of fraud, bribery and corruption in the company's civil aviation business.