Merkel ally confident on Greek bailout vote

BERLIN — A senior ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel said Sunday he is confident that Germany’s governing coalition will strongly back the new Greek rescue package in Parliament, and the main opposition leader said he expects his party to vote in favor.

Parliament’s lower house is to vote Monday on the package, which centers on a second (euro) 130 billion ($173 billion) bailout. Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble has told lawmakers it is the best approach, though he concedes there are “no guarantees” of success and he can’t rule out further aid.

The bailout appears headed for wide support, though the center-right government is keen to keep the number of dissenters in its own ranks low enough to secure a majority without depending on opposition help.

Despite simmering unease about committing more money to rescue measures, it has managed that in previous parliamentary votes in the debt crisis.

“We will get a majority of our own,” Volker Kauder, the parliamentary leader of Merkel’s conservative bloc, told ARD television. “We are all aware of the responsibility that awaits with tomorrow’s decision.”

Sigmar Gabriel, the leader of the opposition Social Democrats, told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper he believes his party “will approve with a large majority” the rescue package. He added that “a Greek state bankruptcy would have incalculable consequences.”

Underlining some lawmakers’ unease, the weekly Der Spiegel reported Sunday that Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich had argued Greece would be better off leaving the euro.

It quoted Friedrich as saying: “Outside the currency union, Greece’s chances of regenerating and becoming more competitive are certainly greater than if it stays in the eurozone.”

“I’m not talking about throwing Greece out, but about creating incentives for an exit that they can’t refuse,” he added, according to the report.

Friedrich’s ministry isn’t involved in the response to the eurozone crisis. Merkel and other top officials stress that they aim to keep Greece in the euro.

Kauder said he was confident Friedrich would vote for the new package, and dismissed the idea of a Greek exit.

“We believe that we should not make any contribution to forcing any member out of the eurozone,” he said. “We want to keep Greece in the eurozone.”

Friedrich’s Christian Social Union, the Bavaria-only sister party to Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, often talks tough on the crisis.

Still, the CSU leader, Bavarian Gov. Horst Seehofer, said over the weekend that he was confident his party would back the latest measures by “a very large majority.”