The Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, whose backing was essential for the talks to start, decisively approved the move by 439 votes to 119, but nearly a fifth of Merkel’s conservatives voted “No”.
Advertisement
On the eve of the vote, Schaeuble provoked ructions in the ruling coalition by repeating his view that the better option for Greece may still be to temporarily leave the euro zone – a scenario he had floated during weekend negotiations.
The alternative to an agreement, she added, “would not be a time-out from the euro that would be orderly… but predictable chaos”.
“We would be grossly negligent, indeed acting irresponsibly if we did not at least try this path”, she said.
On Monday, Ms Merkel and other eurozone leaders struck a preliminary deal for a three-year bailout of Greece which is expected to be worth €85bn. “Therefore this way was not viable”, she added.
In February, there were only 29 rebels. The jump highlighted grassroots opposition to granting further aid.
Schaeuble didn’t directly refer to a Greek euro exit in Friday’s debate, but concluded his speech with a coded warning to Athens: if Greece does its part, he said, “we will put all our strength into making this last chance a success”. Once a bailout is finalized – expected to take several weeks – Merkel will have to face lawmakers again, and she needs to keep in check distaste and resistance to the bailouts in her conservative bloc.
The rebels reflected popular discontent with Greece.
The mass-circulation Bild daily, which has long campaigned for a Grexit, on today published a list of “seven reasons” to vote “No” and wrote that ‘today politicians must show their true colours.’.
A new Forsa poll Friday found 53 per cent of respondents backed new talks, while 42 per cent were against. Tsipras, Greece’s Prime Minister said that he accepted a package which he personally did not consider to be right, believing that it would be damaging for Greece.
Energy Minister Panagiotis Lafazanis and two deputy ministers were removed from their posts, but the main economic portfolios were unchanged, with Euclid Tsakalotos remaining finance minister and George Stathakis economy minister.
A little more than a quarter of the 149 lawmakers from Tsipras’ radical-left Syriza party either voted against or abstained in Wednesday’s vote, including two cabinet members as well as the parliament speaker and former finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis.
Greece got a boost from the European Central Bank (ECB) on Thursday when the euro zone’s central bank agreed to raise emergency liquidity assistance (ELA) for Greek banks.
“Under the Schaeuble regime the eurozone is no union, it is a creditor-debtor relationship, ” the group said on its website.
The exact number that Greece will receive was not revealed.
The EU’s executive arm also green-lighted a bridging loan for Greece through an EU-wide crisis fund to hold Athens over until its new bailout is ratified.
Advertisement
“This can only be possible with the agreement of Greece and 18 other members of the eurozone”.
