–Clarifying In Last Sentence That Italy Downgrade Was Late Monday
BERLIN (MNI) – Germany’s Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble
expects the government’s bill on reform of the European Financial
Stability Facility (EFSF) to win some 80% of votes in parliament, he
said in a newspaper interview published Wednesday.
The lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, is scheduled to vote
on the bill on Sep 29. The Bundestag’s budget committee will vote on it
today. Except for the post-communist Left party, all opposition parties
have already announced that they will vote with the government camp for
the EFSF bill.
“We will have a majority of 80% for the bill in the Bundestag,”
Schaeuble told German daily Berliner Zeitung. So it wouldn’t matter if
some parliamentarians from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU/CSU-FDP
government coalition voted against it, he reasoned.
Some media had speculated that the coalition could break up if it
needed to depend on opposition votes in order to pass the EFSF bill.
Schaeuble, however, suggested that he sees no risk of a coalition break
up. CDU/CSU and FDP will govern together until the end of the
legislature in 2013, he said.
FDP parliamentary leader Rainer Bruederle said on Tuesday that the
state of the coalition is “good.” There is an “excellent collaboration”
with the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, he said.
Schaeuble said the pessimism of financial markets was overblown. He
doesn’t fear a recession in the country or another heavy financial
crisis like the one that ensued after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in
2008, said. “We won’t get a Lehman Brothers II.”
The minister also said he expected Italy to implement its budget
consolidation package swiftly and to convince financial markets of its
fiscal soundness.
Italy’s sovereign debt rating was lowered by Standard and
Poors late Monday.
–Berlin bureau: +49-30-22 62 05 80; email: twidder@marketnews.com
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