Now the Greens have advanced.

Shortly after ten the party leaders Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck stood in front of the microphones.

They had come to the conclusion that it would make sense "to speak more deeply now (...) with the FDP and SPD," said Baerbock.

That is what they are proposing to the FPD.

The result is not surprising, but the approach is.

Before that, the Greens and Yellows had agreed on every step and always appeared together.

Now everyone is fighting for themselves.

The Greens had informed the FDP via SMS, but did not wait for an answer.

They announced their decision on Wednesday when the Free Democrats had just started their own session.

Baerbock said casually, whether the FDP had already answered, she couldn't say yet, she didn't have her cell phone with her at the moment.

Helene Bubrowski

Political correspondent in Berlin.

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Johannes Leithäuser

Political correspondent in Berlin.

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The FDP's answer was announced for eleven o'clock and came half an hour later.

The FDP insisted on Wednesday that the greatest common ground existed with the Union parties.

"For us, Jamaica remains viable in terms of content," said FDP chairman Christian Lindner.

And added: "However, the will to govern and the unity of the Union are being discussed in public." In consultation with the Greens, the FDP had accepted the offer to talk to the SPD;

Shortly before the announcement of the decision, he phoned the SPD candidate for Chancellor Olaf Scholz and offered that a discussion between the three parties could take place on Thursday.

"The greatest intersections"

The Free Democrats made the decision on how to proceed on Wednesday in a virtual meeting, to which the members of the new FDP parliamentary group were connected in addition to the federal executive board. Lindner reported that there was "unanimously great support" for the conduct of talks by the FDP Presidium in the preliminary rounds of the past few days, and that the "proposal was unanimously welcomed" to hold a first exploratory round in "traffic light" format . Lindner did not want to give the impression that the final decision for a coalition with the SPD and the Greens had already been made. The FDP wants to “proceed step by step” and “concentrate on the next step”.

The most important prerequisite for the further path to the formation of a government is obviously for the Free Democrats to maintain and strengthen the joint approach with the Greens as much as possible. Lindner said that despite all the differences, there was a shared conviction with the Greens that “our country must be renewed”. If this commonality remains formative, then “a kind of progressive center could be formed”, which could then generate “a lot of political imagination”.

The Greens chairman Robert Habeck had also said that the traffic light talks were “not a complete rejection of Jamaica”. The Union “really tried,” said Habeck, and you could see that. But there are just the "bigger differences in a Jamaica alliance on our part". With the SPD and the Greens “the greatest overlaps” are conceivable, especially in social politics, said Habeck. "Conceivable, however, expressly means that the biscuit has not yet been eaten." There are still many open points and also differences. "Many things have not yet been discussed, let alone specified in such a way that one could say that it is a safe track."

The green bodies met for around an hour on Wednesday morning.

It is well known that the majority of the Greens favor a so-called traffic light;

Whether there were also dissenting votes at the meeting, for example from the Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg, Winfried Kretschmann, who had repeatedly referred to the advantages of Jamaica, could not be found out.