BERLIN-Chan­cel­lor An­gela Merkel's Cab­i­net yes­ter­day launched the process of rat­i­fy­ing the new Eu­ro­pean Union fis­cal-dis­ci­pline pact in Ger­many, and will now need the op­po­si­tion's help to se­cure a two-thirds ma­jor­i­ty in Par­lia­ment.

Merkel pushed hard for oth­er Eu­ro­pean coun­tries to agree to the so-called fis­cal com­pact, de­signed to lim­it gov­ern­ment over­spend­ing, and 25 na­tion­al lead­ers signed it last week. Yes­ter­day, her Cab­i­net ap­proved leg­is­la­tion to en­shrine the pact in Ger­man law. It isn't yet clear when the Ger­man Par­lia­ment will con­sid­er the deal. Of­fi­cials say it needs a two-thirds ma­jor­i­ty be­cause the pact turns the so-called "debt brake," or bal­anced-bud­get rule, in the Ger­man con­sti­tu­tion in­to an in­ter­na­tion­al­ly bind­ing com­mit­ment-mak­ing it much more dif­fi­cult to Ger­man law­mak­ers to change it in fu­ture.

Merkel's cen­tre-right coali­tion holds 330 of the 620 seats in the low­er house, or Bun­destag. That means she needs at least the sup­port of the biggest op­po­si­tion par­ty, the cen­tre-left So­cial De­moc­rats, to get the fis­cal pact passed. The So­cial De­moc­rats, who have large­ly sup­port­ed Merkel in votes on eu­ro­zone res­cue mea­sures, want to try and ex­tract con­ces­sions from the chan­cel­lor in ex­change for their sup­port this time-par­tic­u­lar­ly on a tax on fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions.

Merkel hasn't pushed for­ward with such a tax be­cause it faces re­sis­tance in parts of her coali­tion. The Free De­moc­rats, her ju­nior coali­tion part­ner, ob­ject to the idea of in­tro­duc­ing a trans­ac­tion tax on­ly in the 17-na­tion eu­ro­zone -leav­ing out Britain and its large fi­nan­cial sec­tor.

AP