Berline - German lawmakers cleared the way for talks on a third Greek bailout after Chancellor Angela Merkel warned failing to try would be reckless and sow chaos.
With Europe’s currency union under threat, Merkel faced down a growing revolt in her party bloc and wielded her government majority in parliament’s lower house to back the mandate on Friday.
Merkel’s Christian Democrats and their Social Democratic coalition partner ensured passage with 439 votes in favor and 119 against. Forty lawmakers abstained.
Five years after the debt crisis spread from Greece, Merkel renewed her argument for geopolitical stability and threw her standing behind persuading increasingly fed-up Germans that Europe’s most-indebted nation still deserves aid.
“We are working to ensure that Greece remains a member of the euro because the euro is much more than a currency,” Merkel told lawmakers in Berlin in a speech before the vote.
“A lot more is at stake” than Greece, she said, citing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East and Europe’s refugee crisis.
Bloomberg