Berlin - In a one-day legislative marathon, German legislators on Friday signed off one of world's biggest bail-outs, injecting €480bn into shaky banks.
The Bundestag lower chamber passed the bill with only two small opposition parties, the Left and the Greens, opposed.
But the bill is still not law until the Bundesrat upper chamber, representing the 16 state governments, has voted on it.
The package aims at shoring up confidence in banks following weeks of share market turmoil.
Chancellor Angela Merkel unveiled the plan on Monday as part of a concerted effort by governments around the world to stabilise markets and to help troubled financial institutions limp through the crisis.
The current efforts are different from the $700bn takeover of bad assets by Washington last month, since they aim to
breathe back life into world banks paralysed by the crisis that began as a crash in the US subprime mortgage market.
Germany's rescue deal is the biggest, comprising €400bn
in guarantees, a €70bn fund and €10bn of leeway.
Berlin says it will need a credit of €100bn to operate the bank-support scheme.
'We can solve the problems'
"It's a €500bn blank cheque," said Greens caucus chief
Renate Kuenast, attacking the bill before the vote, in which 476
members supported Merkel's government and 99 were opposed.
German Economics Minister Michael Glos insisted that the
government's plan was aimed at protecting the nation's citizens rather the bankers. There was no reason for pessimism about the outlook for the economy.
"The opposite," he said. "We can solve the problems." The upper chamber was expected to pass the bill, after the 16 states
agreed on Thursday to back the legislation after some changes.
In an unusual move to save time, the bill was then to be emailed back to German government offices, a few hundred metres away, for its final formalities, including signature by the finance minister, chancellor and President Horst Koehler.
The act of parliament was to be gazetted before Friday was out, with the government printer in Cologne printing 30 000 copies to satisfy the last constitutional condition.
Most of the eurozone nations and some allies have agreed to
identical aid packages, each comprising a huge guarantee for interbank lending and semi-nationalisations of banks by state equity funds.
Germany has not identified which banks need rescuing, but the nine landesbank companies owned by the states are seen as the weakest units.
Two of them, WestLB and BayernLB, were hurt by investing in low-grade derivatives.
The Bundestag agreed to the plan amid signs of an element of calm returning to European share markets on Friday after days of turbulence.
However, the German parliament's backing for the plan is unlikely to save Europe's biggest economy from a sharp downturn as the financial crisis hits growth around the world.
In the run-up to the plan's passage through parliament, the German Government slashed its 2009 economic growth forecast to a feeble 0.2%.
- Sapa