German MPs Expected to Approve Cyprus Aid Thursday

The German parliament will vote Thursday on a bailout plan for debt-mired Cyprus, a deputy from the ruling conservatives said, with the government confident of a clear majority.

Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble will open the session in the Bundestag lower house with a speech, followed by two separate votes on Cyprus, parliamentary sources said Tuesday.

The European Union and the International Monetary Fund cobbled together a 10-billion-euro ($13-billion) rescue package for the Mediterranean island state in return for a major restructuring of its precarious banking sector.

"I assume that the programme (for Cyprus) will be adopted Thursday," said Gerda Hasselfeldt, head of the parliamentary group for the Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats.

Merkel is less than six months away from a general election which will determine if she wins a third term and polls indicate Germans overwhelmingly approve of her austerity-focused crisis fighting.

MPs from the opposition Social Democrats and Greens have also indicated they would back the assistance.

Schaeuble told a newspaper Monday he expected parliament to widely approve the plan.

The German parliament has approved successive bailout plans for Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spanish banks with large majorities to prevent the debt turmoil from triggering a breakup of the eurozone, of which Germany is the biggest member and the rescue paymaster.

After a raft of legal complaints against the rescue packages, the Federal Constitutional Court has given deputies a bigger say in their approval.

For this reason, the Cyprus vote will be broken into two parts: one on the principle of aiding the country and another on the specific terms of the package.

On Friday eurozone finance ministers formally approved the Cyprus rescue plan.