BERLIN: German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble urged parliament on Friday to take what he acknowledged was a difficult decision and approve an extension of Greece's bailout, assuring them Athens would not be allowed to "blackmail" its euro zone partners.
The 72-year-old minister, who has repeatedly voiced his own doubts about whether the new leftist-led government in Athens can be trusted to deliver on its reform promises, appealed to the Bundestag lower house's sense of responsibility for Europe.
"We Germans should do everything to keep Europe together as far as we can and bring it together again and again," Schaeuble said before a vote which Chancellor Angela Merkel's right-left coalition, which has a huge majority, looked bound to win.
Addressing public misgivings in Germany about making further concessions to Greece - whipped up by top-selling daily Bild's front-page campaign for lawmakers to say "NEIN!" to the bailout extension - Schaeuble said no new financial aid was at stake.
"We're not talking about new billions for Greece, we're not talking about any changes to this programme - rather it's about providing or granting extra time to successfully end this programme," he said, adding that solidarity among members of the single currency "doesn't mean you can blackmail each other".
Despite public misgivings - one poll this week showed only 21 percent of Germans back an extension for Greece - lawmakers in Merkel's conservative block signalled they would approve it by a huge majority in a test ballot on Thursday.
Only 22 of 311 members of Merkel's bloc opposed it and five abstained. The support of her Social Democrat coalition partners and the opposition Greens should ensure the biggest majority for any euro zone rescue package so far in the 631-seat chamber.
But the ruling conservatives make no secret of their dislike of what conservative parliamentary leader Volker Kauder called on Thursday the "loutish" behaviour of the Greek government and especially its iconoclastic finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis.
Schaeuble told lawmakers in private on Thursday that the new Greek minister's media comments, reviving talk of a Greek debt "haircut" and casting doubt on Greece's ability to repay its debts, had "strained" the EU's solidarity with Greece.
But the European Commission's financial affairs chief Pierre Moscovici reminded Berlin in an interview with German radio just before the debate that allowing any country to exit the euro zone would merely raise the question "who is leaving next?".
The Bundestag vote is the only major parliamentary hurdle for the Greek bailout extension, though other countries have discussed it at committee level.
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