Friedrich Merz aiming to build government before Easter after winning most votes in Germany election

Deutsche Presse-Agentur, the German news agency, has ruled that the new expected coalition between the conservative CDU/CSU union and the Social Democratic party will no longer qualify as a “grand coalition”, or GroKo, as it was known in Angela Merkel years.

This is to account for the reality that the two are no longer the largest parties in the new Bundestag – with the far-right Alternative für Deutschland now the second largest, ahead of the SPD, after the elections on Sunday.