The Greens and the Free Democrats (FDP) have reportedly already initiated exploratory talks: representatives of both parties met on Tuesday for the first preliminary discussions.

The party leaders of the Greens and FDP have started talks about forming a government. On Tuesday, the FDP party leader Christian Lindner and FDP general secretary Volker Wissing took part in a first meeting for so-called preliminary auditions, with the two chairmen Robert Habeck and Annalena Baerbock, for the Greens.

The declared aim of both parties is to agree on the primary lines of political cooperation, which should serve as a prerequisite for a “restart” of government policy in Germany. If a positive outcome can be reached, the FDP and the Greens will seek to speak to the party of a possible chancellor, i.e. the SPD or CDU / CSU.

SPD chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz had previously campaigned for a traffic light coalition. The SPD has always been a party that has seen the political implementation of law, freedom and a better life as possible. Like the SPD, the Greens see stopping man-made climate change and the ecological issues surrounding it as central but are “of course more focused on it,” said Scholz.

Meanwhile, media reports caused a stir. Reportedly, the Greens chairmen Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck had already agreed on who would take over the post of vice-chancellor in a possible government coalition. According to the reports, Baerbock, who had previously confessed to her own mistakes in the election campaign, was inclined to leave the role for Habeck.

However, Habeck now made it clear that the Greens only want to decide on their personnel line-up after coalition negotiations if they participate in government. Before the parliamentary group meeting, he said that “of course, at the end of such a process on content and personnel – the entire tableau – the party would decide on a party congress or a member survey”. At this point in time, the question of who among the Greens will take over the post of Vice-Chancellor was “completely irrelevant”. “We don’t even have a chancellor,” Habeck stated.

Image by Dirk Vorderstrasse / Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY-3.0)