Germany’s future coalition partners to relax debt rules to boost defence budget

Conservative alliance and Social Democrats to propose exempting spending of more than 1% of GDP on defence

The prospective partners in Germany's next government have said they will seek to loosen rules on running up debt to allow for higher defence spending.

They said they will also seek to set up a huge 500bn ($533bn ) fund to finance spending on Germany's infrastructure over the next 10 years.