BERLIN (MNI) – Germany’s Free Democrats (FDP), the junior partner
in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government coalition, for the most part
back the euro rescue deal outlined at the summit of Eurozone leaders on
Friday, FDP parliamentary leader Birgit Homburger said Tuesday.
“We are of the opinion that…most of the points [important to the
FDP] are part of the deal,” Homburger told reporters ahead of a meeting
of her parliamentary group.
She added, however, that the FDP parliamentarians still see the
need “for precisions” in the final euro rescue package to be agreed at a
full EU summit at the end of the month.
The FDP lawmakers will tell Chancellor Merkel, who is to attend the
FDP parliamentary meeting today, “on which points we still see the need
for specifications in the course of the next two weeks,” Homburger said.
Earlier this week, Michael Meister, the deputy leader of Merkel’s
center-right CDU/CSU parliamentary group, said the EMU leaders’
so-called Pact for Europe “is close to the red line of being a transfer
union — something which we reject.”
Meister told German daily Die Welt that he is bothered most of all
by the decision to allow both the temporary European Financial Stability
Facility (EFSF) and its successor, the European Stabilisation Mechanism
(ESM), to purchase sovereign bonds in the primary market from countries
that enter into bailout agreements and undertake the required
conditions.
“We will have to check this carefully also regarding its impact on
financial markets,” Meister told the newspaper.
Still, he said he believes the CDU/CSU lawmakers will back the deal
in parliament: “I expect that the CDU/CSU parliamentary group will
support the negotiation results…even though they comes close to our
pain threshold.”
–Berlin bureau: +49-30-22 62 05 80; email: twidder@marketnews.com
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