While the four-month extension passed with a comfortable majority of 542 out of 587 lawmakers in the Bundestag who voted, there was a substantial rebellion within Ms Merkel's Christian Democratic Union and sister party the Christian Social Union. There were 13 abstentions.

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Invoking the second world war, Wolfgang Schäuble, finance minister, told the Bundestag: "In the 70 years since this catastrophe, the German catastrophe, we Germans should do everything we can to ensure that we hold Europe together."