German warning over rescue fund ratification

The speaker of Germany's parliament has warned Chancellor Angela Merkel against attempting to railroad measures to extend the eurozone's crisis fund through parliament next month. "The European recovery mechanism issue is so important that parliament cannot debate it with the necessary care and vote on it in the course of just a few days," Norbert Lammert, a member of Merkel's Christian Democratic Party (CDU), told Sunday's edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung paper. "It will hardly be possible to deal with the matter between September 20 and 23," the time slot allocated by the government to push through the measures decided by European leaders on July 21 in a bid to strengthen the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) fund to guarantee Greek bonds, he said. European governments want to rush measures through their respective parliaments to steady the nerves of financial markets which saw panic selling over the past week. "It's up to parliament itself to decide how much it needs to debate" the matter, Lammert added. "The German government cannot decide anything that will cost only one cent without the approval of the Bundestag," Germany's lower house of parliament, he said. He also expressed concern that European leaders had failed to agree on mandatory sanctions against countries that mismanage their finances. "I'm sure of one thing. The peace that is so much needed on financial markets cannot be achieved without automatic sanctions against countries that violate stability criteria," he said. Merkel, who is holding an emergency summit meeting on Tuesday with French President Nicholas Sarkozy, has promised European partners her country would ratify the measures by the end of September. She is assured of a majority in parliament as even opposition Green and Social Democrats back the measures. But rifts have opened within her own governing coalition where 30 to 40 members of parliament -- with backing by some ranking members of the Free Democrats (FDP) -- are threatening to oppose the plan. "We won't hand out a blank cheque to buy other country's bonds," FDP parliamentary group leader Rainer Bruederle said in an interview with the Tagesspiegel newspaper. The Free Democrats are also pushing for a cap on debts to be enshrined in the constitution of all 17 eurozone countries, following Germany's example.