Germany's main opposition parties have told Chancellor Angela Merkel that her plans to have parliament agree by summer to the EU fiscal pact plus the new permanent bailout scheme for the eurozone are too ambitious.
The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, is facing increasing problems in obtaining quick parliamentary approval for the European Union's fiscal pact and the eurozone's permanent rescue fund, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM).
The EU fiscal pact aims to enforce German-style budget discipline across 25 of the 27 member countries, and requires a two-thirds majority in the German parliament, the Bundestag. But opposition parties insisted that amendments were needed to make sure that the consolidation of finances went hand in hand with growth incentives to get struggling economies out of the doldrums. "We think the pact needs to be complemented by a serious initiative to strengthen growth in Europe", Green party floor leader, Jürgen Trittin, said after a meeting of parliamentary leaders with Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schäuble.
Both the Greens and the Social Democrats said they wanted to see growth-boosting measures in place such as so-called "project bonds", which could be issued by the European Investment Bank to fund infrastructure schemes in economically depressed areas. Opposition figures said in Berlin that the adoption of growth-boosting measures needed more time than had been envisaged by the Chancellor. They added that the coalition government was under no time pressure to finalise the deal by summer, since parliamentary approval was only needed by the end of this year.
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