My take on it is that the Germans are just asking the question to test the waters and political will. EADS is involved in Neuron, but will that develop into anything useful in time to replace Tornado? Will German airspace policy come around to the idea of drones at all, given the issues they had with Global Hawk procurement?
The Germans have a history of flying their aircraft types longer than other European countries (eg F-101 and F-4) so why not keep Tornado going longer?
If I was the Germans I would look to the UK to pay for Stormshadow and Brimstone integration on Typhoon before buying the Tranche 3 jets with all the lessons learned from RAF intro to service.