Preliminary agreement in Germany to negotiate the Grand Coalition between conservatives and socialists

The conservatives of German election winner Friedrich Merz and the Social Democrats (SPD) announced an agreement on key issues on Saturday that paves the way for formal talks to begin next week on forming a coalition government.

"We have a joint document that forms the basis for coalition negotiations that will begin, if necessary, next week," said the CDU leader, referring to the three key issues on which consensus was reached in exploratory talks: tightening migration policy, finance and the labour market.

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