Election winner Friedrich Merz's conservative CDU, its Bavarian sister party CSU, and the Social Democrats (SPD) have taken a major step toward forming a coalition government, the heads of the parties said.

Germany's CDU, CSU and SPD parties have produced an exploratory paper on their plans on various topics, including migration, overcoming the first major hurdle on the way to forming a government together.

In Germany, coalition governments are typically formed through a two-step process: parties first engage in exploratory talks to assess potential alliances before entering formal coalition negotiations