German Chancellor Angela Merkel, center, and Vice Chancellor and Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel, center right, cast their votes during a special session of the parliament Bundestag in Berlin, Germany, Friday, July 17, 2015.
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Popular misgivings run deep in Germany, the euro zone country which has already contributed most to Greece’s two bailouts since 2010, about funnelling yet more aid to Athens.
“It’s not going to be easy”.
“Now I think that things will turn out for the best, as long as those in power can act with good intentions, without corruption”, said pensioner Giannis Filinis as he waited in a queue outside a bank to withdraw the maximum 120 euros for retirees without bank cards.
The measure to seek a new 86-billion-euro ($94 billion) rescue package sailed through the Bundestag by 439 to 119 votes with 40 abstentions.
“The principle… of responsibility and solidarity that has guided us since the beginning of the European debt crisis marks the entire result from Monday“, she said.
Merkel and her hardline Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble have been harshly criticised for forcing more austerity on Greece, using the threat of a five-year euro “time-out” that had been floated by Schaeuble.
As NPR’s Christopher Dean Hopkins reported, euro zone leaders hammered out a deal deemed acceptable to Greece’s leftist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Monday.
The developments have raised expectations that Greece will secure a financial lifeline to allow the country to get back toward some sort of economic normality following weeks of crisis that’s seen banks shuttered for almost three weeks and withdrawals at ATMs limited to a paltry 60 euros a day.
“That’s not a normal life so we have to negotiate quickly”, Merkel said.
She said Berlin would do all it could to bring talks to a successful conclusion but would “negotiate hard” to ensure Athens stuck to agreements. “We would be grossly negligent, and act irresponsibly, if we didn’t at least attempt this way”.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel was confronted on national television by a young Palestinian refugee who is due to be deported back to Lebanon. The bill passed with a massive majority thanks to the support of three pro-European opposition parties. Merkel is asking German lawmakers to clear the way for negotiations on a new, third…
On Wednesday this week, anti-austerity protesters hurled petrol bombs at police in front of Greece’s parliament as lawmakers began debating deeply unpopular reforms needed to unlock the new eurozone bailout.
Some welcome relief did come yesterday when the European Central Bank (ECB) announced increased emergency funding for Greek banks allowing them to reopen on Monday. But he has insisted he had no other choice, as the alternative would have seen Greece forced out of the euro – a development that would have further crashed the Greek economy as well as roiling financial markets.
A little more than a quarter of the 149 lawmakers from Tsipras’ radical-left Syriza party either voted against or abstained in the vote earlier this week.
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In a test ballot at a five-hour meeting late Thursday of the 311-member conservative bloc, 48 lawmakers voted against opening negotiations with Greece and three abstained, according to Reuters, which cited participants in the meeting. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions were not public.
