The German parliament voted by an overwhelming majority Wednesday to back a massive new bailout for Greece, with Chancellor Angela Merkel spared a major rebellion of deputies opposing the aid. However, German media have reported that in a test vote late Tuesday, opposition was kept in check as 60 of 311 conservative lawmakers voted against or abstained.
Advertisement
Thanks in part to the support of the Social Democrats, Merkel’s junior coalition partner, and the opposition Greens, the package sailed through the Bundestag lower house with 454 lawmakers voting for, 113 against and 18 abstaining.
“If Greece honors its commitments and fully implements the program in a decisive way, then the Greek economy can grow again in the coming years“, he said. But Schaeuble insisted that the new rescue plan offered the path to Greece’s renewal, even though the two previous bailouts, which ran on similar lines, failed.
“I remain firmly of the view that Greece’s debt has become unsustainable and that Greece cannot restore debt sustainability exclusively through actions on its own”, she said.
The vote in parliament will follow a debate scheduled to start at 09:00 (07:00 GMT).
The German parliament has approved a third bailout for Greece worth up to €86 billion ($95.5 billion) to save the EU member country from bankruptcy.
“There are no guarantees that all this will work and doubts are always allowed”, Mr Schauble said.
On Tuesday, the Greek government said it had agreed the sale of 14 regional airports to German transport company Fraport Slentel for €1.23bn.
Tsipras also wrote to European Parliament President Martin Schulz on Wednesday to ask for the body to be included in the group of institutions monitoring Greece’s bailout.
The three-year rescue package also won parliamentary approval in Spain, Estonia, Austria, Latvia, Lithuania and Finland this week.
The Dutch parliament also gave its blessing to the Greek rescue, while the board of the euro zone’s bailout fund in a teleconference approved disbursing the first tranche of funds under the new Greek programme.
The approvals will clear the way for the European Stability Mechanism, the euro area’s financial backstop, to set in motion the first payout in time for Greece to meet a 3.2 billion-euro payment to the European Central Bank Thursday.
The government has taken several steps to try to halt the financial crisis – including closing the stock exchange for more than a month, shutting banks for three weeks and instituting limits on the amount of money Greeks could withdraw. Greece has spent much of the past six years in recession.
Advertisement
Many MPs want assurances that the worldwide Monetary Fund will contribute to the bailout – but the IMF is avoiding any commitment until Greece’s progress is assessed in October.
