Despite declarations by Friedrich Merz, the likely future chancellor, the future government's road to taking office looks to be long and strewn with pitfalls.

Conservative and center-left parties launch coalition talks on Friday. hoping to avoid prolonging Germany’s post-election uncertainty.

Preliminary talks between Germany's CDU and SPD have yielded an early result, with the parties agreeing on a special fund to boost defense spending, freed from the "debt brake."

The conservatives and the Social Democrats (SPD) agreed to seek a loosening of Germany's debt brake to allow higher defence spending, and to propose the creation of a 500 billion euro infrastructure fund,

Germany's conservatives and Social Democrats (SPD) on Tuesday held talks on forming a coalition as hopes for buoying Europe's largest economy rose on the prospect of a nearly trillion euro borrowing boom to fund military and infrastructure spending.