MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Bipartisan support for the EU bailout fund ESM in the German Bundestag

However President Gauck said the signing of the bill will be delayed on instructions from the Constitutional Court

The budget committee of Germany's lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, on Wednesday approved with a large majority the bills on the European permanent bailout fund ESM and the EU fiscal compact, it was reported in the Berlin media quoting a source who attended the committee meeting.

According to the official, the opposition SPD and Greens parliamentarians voted for the bills together with the parliamentarians from Chancellor Angela Merkel's CDU/CSU-FDP government coalition with only a few exceptions. Only the post-communist Left party parliamentarians voted against the bills.

The Bundestag and the Bundesrat, the upper house representing the 16 states, will vote on the bills on Friday. The bills need to be passed with a two-thirds majority.

A government spokesman said on Monday that the Chancellor Angela Merkel administration expects “broad majorities” in both houses of parliament.

On Sunday the government won the backing of the regional states for the bills in the Bundesrat. Last Thursday, Merkel reached a deal with the main opposition parties in the Bundestag.

Yet it will likely still take several weeks before the bills become law. President Joachim Gauck anticipated that he planned to delay signing the bills. The Constitutional Court had asked him to wait until it had decided on requests for preliminary injunctions that have been filed against the two bills, Gauck said.