German lawmakers from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition indicated that they will back a deal struck by euro-area leaders to snuff out the debt crisis, freeing her to focus on campaigning for six state elections.
Senior coalition lawmakers said that the weekend agreement on a pact to bolster competitiveness, which commits euro nations to follow Germany and enact budget rules into law, will probably overcome resistance to other aspects of the crisis package. That raises the likelihood the measures to be ratified at a March 24- 25 European Union summit will pass the German parliament.
“If the euro group can agree on a convincing, realistic framework for tackling both those economic and budgetary causes of the crisis, I see that we in this caucus could bite into the sour apple,” Norbert Barthle, budget spokesman in parliament for Merkel’s Christian Democrats, said.
The 17 euro-region leaders meeting in Brussels unexpectedly announced a comprehensive package to stem the crisis on March 12. Merkel originally pledged a final deal by March 25, two days before an election in Baden-Wuerttemberg, the state her party has ruled for more than 50 years. Polls show the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) may struggle to hold the state.
By getting the matter out of the way early, Merkel lessened the likelihood that it becomes a campaign issue in the state votes, the next of which is on March 20 in Saxony-Anhalt. That increases the chance the final crisis deal will be passed by parliament, said Hans-Juergen Hoffmann, head of polling company Psephos.
“As an election risk for Merkel, the euro crisis has become a phantom threat, lacking the potency this year that it had in 2010 when the tabloids ran amok with headlines about Greece,” Hoffmann said by phone. “The economy’s humming along, the euro crisis hasn’t hurt jobs or emptied people’s purses. If voters are unperturbed right now, does it make sense for her lawmakers to rock the boat? I don’t think so.”
