德国议会就希腊援助问题进行投票

Germany's parliament is due to start debating a draft law on the country's share of the bail-out for Greece.

德国议会将就对希腊财政援助的份额问题展开讨论。

Greece's economic reforms that led to it abandoning the drachma as its currency in favour of the euro in 2002 made it easier for the country to borrow money.

The lower house, the Bundestag, is set to debate the legislation for two hours before voting. The upper house, the Bundesrat, will vote afterwards.

Assuming both houses back the bill, as is expected, President Horst Koehler will then sign it into law on Friday.

Chancellor¹ Angela Merkel has defended providing 22.4bn euros ($28.6bn) in aid to Greece, saying the EU is at stake（处于险境） .

On Thursday, she warned that if the 27 member states did not work together on such crises, "the markets will think we're unable to act".

Later, the French Senate approved France's contribution of up to 16.8bn euros to the aid package for Greece.

'Fattest cheque in history'

Ms Merkel's Christian² Democratic Union and coalition³（联合，结合） partner, the Free Democratic Party, have a comfortable majority in parliament.

The opposition⁴ Social Democratic Party has said it will abstain⁵（放弃，避免） in both votes, while the Greens have said they will support the bill.

Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble earlier asked the opposition for support for the legislation, telling the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper that the markets would "pay attention to how the help is being backed on a national level".

Under the bail-out, Greece's 15 partners in the eurozone will lend it 80bn euros spread over three years and the International Monetary⁶ Fund will lend 30bn euros.

The BBC's Steve Rosenberg in Berlin says there is strong public resistance to the bail-out and the press has labelled Germany's contribution as "the fattest cheque in history".

Even if the legislation is approved, one group of euro-sceptic academics will challenge the decision in Germany's highest court, our correspondent says.

Later on Friday, Chancellor Merkel will join other heads of state from the eurozone for an emergency summit in Brussels.

Germany and France have already called for the single currency's rulebook（规划手册） to be rewritten - with tougher sanctions for those countries that run up big budget deficits⁷, our correspondent adds.