By Andreas Rinke, Vera Eckert and Matthias Williams BERLIN (Reuters) -German election winner Friedrich Merz's conservatives and the Social Democrats (SPD) concluded preliminary talks on forming a coalition government on Saturday,

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

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,

The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) have agreed on a framework document for further negotiations on forming a government, according to Der Spiegel. Less than two weeks after the early elections to the Bundestag,

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 conservative bloc and the Social Democrats (SPD) said they agreed on the importance of enhancing the country's defence capabilities both domestically and internationally, during their exploratory talks that concluded on Saturday.