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Germany's parliament backs new Greek bailout talks Germany's parliament backs new Greek bailout talks
(about 1 hour later)
German politicians have given their go-ahead for the eurozone to negotiate a third bailout for Greece, heeding a warning from the chancellor, Angela Merkel, that the alternative was chaos. The German parliament has voted in favour of starting negotiations on a new multi-billion bailout deal for Greece following an often fiery cross party debate.
The Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, whose backing is essential for the talks to start, decisively approved the move by 439 votes to 119, with 40 abstentions. But Angela Merkel, the German chancellor faced the biggest rebellion of her chancellorship with 65 of her fellow conservatives refusing to back the €86bn deal.
Popular misgivings run deep in Germany – the eurozone country which has contributed most to Greece’s two bailouts since 2010 – about funnelling yet more aid to Athens.
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The finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, has questioned whether a new programme will succeed, although the creditors’ offer to Athens includes the conditions for more austerity and economic reform that Berlin had demanded. The dissent, which was much higher than predicted ahead of the vote, reflected the growing unease in Germany towards rescuing Greece. Around 49% of Germans said today (fri) they were unhappy about a fresh bailout, which will be the third in five years.
But Merkel argued for negotiating a new deal to prevent a Greek exit from the euro and said proposals for Athens to temporarily leave the euro were unworkable. During an emotionally-charged debate Merkel warned of “predictable chaos” if the Bundestag failed to back the plan.
“The alternative to this agreement would not be a ‘timeout’ from the euro … but rather predictable chaos,” she told MPs. “We would be grossly negligent, and act irresponsibly, if we didn’t at least attempt this way.” “We would be grossly negligent, indeed acting irresponsibly if we did not at least try this path,” she said, during a 20 minute address to the lower house, on what was her 61st birthday.
Schäuble himself has suggested Greece might be better off taking such a timeout to sort out its daunting economic problems. But in an attempt to head off critical voices who believe Greece will not stick to its reform plans, she said that the bailout would come with strict conditions attached. “Simple expressions of intent are not enough,” she told the house.
But the chancellor said neither Greece nor the other 18 eurozone member countries were willing to accept the idea. “Therefore, this way was not viable,” she added. The special session, which saw MPs called back from their summer recess, resulted in 439 voting in favour of the new deal, 119 voting against and 40 abstaining.
She still thanked Schäuble – her most powerful ally – for his work in the long, gruelling talks which produced the new bailout plan last weekend. Politicians gave him resounding applause while Schäuble nodded and gave a wry smile. Sixty conservatives from the CDU/CSU alliance voted against, with five abstaining. The number of rebels has risen more than three-fold since the last parliamentary vote on Greece in February, indicating just how much the pressure on Merkel will continue to grow on Merkel if Greece needs yet more help any time soon.
Despite his misgivings, Schäuble lined up with his boss. “I ask you all to vote for this request today. The government didn’t submit the request easily,” he said. “It’s a last attempt to fulfil this extraordinarily difficult task.” The Social Democrats (SPD), junior partners in Merkel’s grand coalition, proved much more supportive of the chancellor, backing the vote with 175 yeses, and only four nos. One of those against was the former finance minister Peer Steinbruck (umlaut over u).
Merkel also won support from the Social Democrats, the junior coalition partner. “Every debate about a Grexit must now belong to the past,” said Social Democrat leader Sigmar Gabriel, who is also vice-chancellor. The far-left Linke delivered 53 no votes and two abstentions, while 23 Greens were in favour with two against, and 33 abstentions.
Fifty members of Angela Merkel’s CDU/CSU coalition defied her and voted against beginning talks – a bigger rebellion than in February, when 29 CDU/CSU MPs rejected giving Greece a four-month extension to its old bailout. Finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble called the third bailout a “final attempt” to solve an “extraordinarily difficult problem”, but one which he said he was convinced could work.
The rebels voted alongside MPs from the leftwing Linke party – who had earlier savaged the bailout plan for its lack of concrete debt relief. But he came under fire from all parties for his tough stance towards Greece, especially for proposing a temporary exit of Greece from the Eurozone, a plan he said as recently as Thursday he would still be prepared to put in place.
Hitting back at the harsh criticism he has received in recent days, including depictions of him in the Greek press as an IS terrorist who had beheaded Greece, he said: “I have such a thick skin that it can’t derail me, but what does torment me is distorting polemic that completely misses the point.” Soon afterwards Sahra Wagenknecht of the far-left Linke, accused him of being a “cutback Taliban”.
Klaus Peter Willsch, one of the most prominent CDU rebels said he did not believe that Greece would stick to its pledges, and that the third bailout was the equivalent of throwing good money after bad.
“However much water you pour into a bottomless barrel, it will never fill up,” he said. The comment was seized on by social media users and compared to the Socrates’ observation: “the most wretched...carry water into their leaky jar with a sieve”.
At one point tempers flew as Thomas Strobl, one of the deputy leaders of the CDU, who also happens to be Schauble’s son-in-law, said: “The Greeks have got on our nerves for long enough”.
Katrin Göring-Eckardt, leader of the Greens, accused him of “stooping even lower than (the former Greek finance minister) Varoufakis”. Schäuble was seen to shake his head at the exchange.
At the close of the session, hundreds of MPs were seen jostling for taxis outside the Reichstag building, impatient to return to their interrupted summer holidays and hoping that they were free of the Greek crisis for the time being.
Related: Which countries still need to approve a Greek bailout – and how will they vote?Related: Which countries still need to approve a Greek bailout – and how will they vote?
The Greek parliament’s decision on Wednesday night to support negotiating a fresh bailout paved the way for the Bundestag to recall all German MPs from their summer recess for Friday’s ballot.
The European Central Bank increased emergency funding to keep Greece’s banks from collapse on Thursday, and EU finance ministers also approved €7bn in bridging loans, allowing Greece to avoid defaulting on a bond payment to the ECB next Monday and clear its arrears with the IMF.
Before the Bundestag debate, Conservative lawmaker Mark Helfrich told Deutschlandfunk radio he would still vote no, adding: “This is about ruined trust.”
Some members of the opposition Green party said they wanted Greece to stay in the euro but rejected austerity as a cure for its ills, leaving abstention as their only option.
“Another bloodletting won’t make Greece more healthy again,” said the Greens’ Katrin Göring-Eckardt, backing IMF calls for Greece’s debt burden to be eased. That fell on deaf ears with Merkel and Schäuble, who said European law did not permit a “haircut” writing off part of the debt.
German conservatives have accused the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, of blackmail for saying other weaker eurozone countries would slide into crisis if Greece were forced out of the euro.
But Gregor Gysi, of the Left party – Syriza’s ideological counterpart in Germany – turned the tables. “You’re not being blackmailed – you’re the blackmailers yourselves,” he said. “Mr Schäuble, I’m sorry but you’re in the process of destroying the European idea.”