Il Bundestag German voted theok to the four-month extension of aid to Greece. In his speech, the German Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, asked the assembly to give the go-ahead, but did not abstain from issuing new warnings to Athens: "Greece – he said – cannot decide on its own".
Furthermore, Schaeuble reiterated that Athens must respect the commitments made with its European partners, because "solidarity cannot be translated into mutual blackmail".
There were 542 votes in favor, while those against stopped at 32. But there was no shortage of critical voices in the majority itself. Torsten Frei, deputy of the Cdu, Merkel's party, found that in Germany there is a suicide rate three times higher than that of Greece. And his colleague Klaus-Peter Willsch, from the same party, instead resorted to the metaphor of "the used car: I would never buy one from Tsipras or Varoufakis".
