Last week Germany experienced a long-awaited though a bombshell event. Chancellor hopeful from the conservative CDU/CSU bloc Armin Laschet announced his intention to resign as CDU chairman, which implies his waiver of claims to take the helm of the German government. Now the CDU is planning an extraordinary congress to elect a new leader, and this will probably happen in December or January. But it is right now that the German conservatives need a new chancellor candidate, and the most likely one is leader of Bavaria's Christian Social Union Markus Söder.

Back in spring, Söder vied for leading the CDU/CSU to the Bundestag elections, and with him at the lead, the conservatives could lead the race after the vote, as all the surveys showed. However, the Christian Democratic leadership insisted on nominating Laschet as a candidate though less popular but "right" for the party establishment. This decision eventually turned into defeat both to the entire conservative bloc and Laschet personally. In the eyes of his party fellows and nearly the rest of Germany, he caused CDU/CSU's loss in the election and had therefore to announce his resignation after the Greens and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) preferred to kick off preliminary negotiations on a ruling coalition with the Social Democrats rather than the conservatives.

It's not over until it's over for the CDU/CSU. The fact that the new German government will be a "traffic light coalition of the SPD, the Greens and the FDP, is not yet predetermined. This week, the three parties plan to hold the next three rounds of preliminary talks, but there are substantive divergences in their stances that have yet to be overcome, as co-chairman of the Greens Robert Habeck says. And one of the key controversial issues is financial policy, including renewable energy investment and additional budget borrowing.

The SPD and the Greens advocate increasing public investment, particularly through new loans. However, the FDP has repeatedly stated that its coalition negotiations "red line" is the inviolability of the "debt brake" limiting German state budget deficit. Moreover, the Free Democrats differ significantly from the SPD and the Greens on tax hikes. This is where – finance and taxes – "traffic light" negotiations may stumble and eventually fail.

If this really happens, the "Jamaica" pattern will get to the agenda, i.e. a coalition of the Greens and the FDP under the CDU/CSU guidance. The conservatives have repeatedly stated readiness to discuss such a format and reiterated this after Laschet's impending resignation was made public. "Jamaica" is the CDU/CSU's only chance to designate its chancellor, and in case of success, Markus Söder will most likely take the lead. The conservatives simply don't have other possible candidates right now.

However, there is absolutely no guarantee to success. On a nationwide scale, Germany has so far witnessed neither "traffic light" nor "Jamaica". Formation of "triple" coalitions of this kind is a daunting challenge over the necessity of aligning the strongly differing political stances of all their potential participants. After the latest elections, for one, the CDU/CSU, the FDP and the Greens did seek to agree on a joint coalition, but failed. The same thing may happen today either.

Moreover, after the news of Laschet's resignation, the CDU started increasingly focusing on the choice of its new chairman and the subsequent internal party struggle. In such a transitional state, the conservatives won't prove the best negotiators, while the bloc's unstable state is already losing attractiveness in the eyes of potential coalition partners, that is the FDP and the Greens.

It's actually kind of hard to tell how the situation is going to be navigated, but one thing is clear: the "chancellor issue" is yet to be resolved in Germany. With Armin Laschet's resignation, Markus Söder does have a real chance to take on leadership of the new government. But for the time being, Angela Merkel's most likely successor is Social Democratic candidate Olaf Scholz. He may become chancellor in case of two of the three possible ruling coalition formats, i.e. not only the "traffic light", but also the new "grand coalition" between the SPD and the CDU/CSU. This latter format is certainly the least likely, but one shouldn't rule it out, because if both the "traffic light" and "Jamaica" fail, the German parties will simply run out of options except for a new election.