Spain, Estonia and Austria approve third Greek bailout

Members of Spain's lower house of parliament on Tuesday approved the latest bailout for Greece, worth 86 billion euros ($95 billion) by a vote of 297 to 29. The only party to reject the deal was the small far-left party United Left.

Unlike Germany and some other European Union countries, Spain did not require a parliamentary vote to ratify the bailout. However, the country's conservative prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, decided to put it to lawmakers because at 10.15 billion euros, Spain's contribution is "significant." There was virtually no risk in doing so, as Rajoy's Popular Party has an absolute majority in the lower chamber.

Spain itself was the recipient of European financial aid to prop up its ailing banks in 2012.

Both Estonia and Austria also approved the bailout on Tuesday. Fifty of the 93 Estonian lawmakers present at the parliamentary session voted in favor of the deal, while in Vienna, the Austrian parliament's European Stability Mechanism (ESM) subcommittee signed off on it as well. The 18-member committee was required to approve the bailout because the funds for the latest bailout are to come from the ESM. The approval of the Austrian parliament is not required, but a debate on the issue is expected to be held in the near future.

Dozens of German conservatives set to break ranks - again

In Berlin, meanwhile, dozens of members of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavaria-based sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), are expected to break ranks by voting against the deal in the Bundestag on Wednesday.

Chancellor Merkel and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble used an extraordinary meeting of the CDU-CSU parliamentary group to try to convince lawmakers threatening to vote against the deal to change their minds. Sources from the parliamentary groups said that in a dry run held at the end of the hourlong meeting, 56 lawmakers voted against the measure, with four abstaining. Around 20 members of the parliamentary group, which has 311 of the 631 seats in the Bundestag, were absent.

Despite the fact that many conservatives plan to vote against the deal, the measure is almost certain to pass easily with the support of Merkel's Grand Coalition partners, the Social Democrats.

In last month's Bundestag vote on whether to give the government a mandate to negotiate a new Greek bailout, some 60 members of the conservative bloc voted no.

The 19 eurozone finance ministers signed off on the latest Greek bailout in a meeting in Brussels last Friday.

pfd/kms (AFP, dpa, AP, Reuters)