Merkel Cabinet Poised to Approve Expanded Euro Rescue Fund as Dissent Ebbs
By Brian Parkin and Rainer Buergin - Aug 31, 2011 9:08 AM GMT+0200 Wed Aug 31 07:08:03 GMT 2011
German Chancellor
Angela Merkel’s Cabinet is today set to ratify expanded measures to combat the euro-area debt crisis as she quells a revolt among coalition lawmakers that threatened to derail the package.
Senior members of Merkel’s Christian Democrats including finance and economy spokesman, Michael Meister, and floor leader
Volker Kauder said this week they were confident of securing a majority for the proposed changes to the European rescue fund. Merkel yesterday pledged to consult lawmakers as much as they wanted to dispel lingering doubts.
“We’re in a now-familiar phase of ifs and buts from lawmakers but the bill will pass,” Peter Grottian, a politics professor at Berlin’s Free University, said by phone yesterday. “What’s more painful: risking the collapse of the government and a devastating economic backlash, or gritting your teeth and waving through a bill that may be effective even if you don’t understand it?”
Ministers meet in Berlin from 9:30 a.m. to deliberate a reworked European Financial Stability Facility including sovereign bond-buying powers. The measures, which were agreed on by European leaders at a July 21 summit, will push up
Germany’s share of EFSF loan guarantees to 211 billion euros ($305 billion) from 123 billion euros. With two state elections next month as the bill goes to a vote, some coalition lawmakers have said they’ll refuse to back the government line.
‘Mountains of Debt’
“This is a fundamental question for our children and grandchildren, whom we’re already saddling with mountains of debt -- and then we’re adding huge risks on top of that,” Wolfgang Bosbach, CDU chairman of parliament’s interior-affairs committee, said in an interview on ARD television today. “I’m not against helping
Greece,” he said. “I just doubt that ever- higher debts can actually help.”
Merkel’s Christian Democrats begin a two-day conclave in Berlin today with the debt crisis as a focus. Their Free Democratic Party coalition partner, which has adopted a more skeptical tone to bailouts, began a similar conclave yesterday.
They meet amid campaigns for state elections in Merkel’s home state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania on Sept. 4 and in Berlin on Sept. 18.
The parliamentary vote on changes to the EFSF and Greek aid is due on Sept. 29. While the opposition Social Democrats and Greens have said they’ll back the measures, ensuring the legislation passes, any rebellion by Merkel’s own bloc would risk destabilizing the coalition.
For all the resistance to providing ever-more aid, the consequences of voting down the bills mean it’s a step too far for most lawmakers, according to Manfred Guellner, the head of polling company Forsa.
“Few in the ruling coalition want to risk being sent into the political wilderness if rejecting this bill means new federal elections,” Guellner said by phone yesterday. “In a crisis that is so complex, where so much is at stake and where no one has a simple solution it makes sense to seek consensus. That’s why we hear supportive noises from the main opposition parties and why a coalition majority is likely.”
***
Al momento, tutto procede regolarmente.