The German Parliament on Friday voted yes on entering a new round of negotiations for a Greek bailout, and the European Union formally approved a bridging loan—two steps that move the controversial €86 billion rescue package for debt-ridden Greece forward past a significant hurdle.

Parliament, or Bundestang, voted 439-119, with 40 lawmakers abstaining, in favor of beginning talks on a third bailout which, as Common Dreams reported on Thursday, “comes at a high political and social cost” through severe austerity measures—but which Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said he was “forced to accept.”

The BBC reports:

Among those measures are tax hikes, pension cuts, and privatization of public property. The measures are harsher than those rejected just this month by more than 60 percent of Greek voters in an emergency referendum on July 5. Former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis called them Greece’s “terms of surrender.”

The Greek Parliament approved the deal on Thursday despite pushbacks from Syriza lawmakers and mass protests throughout the country—which grew dramatic overnight with a police crackdown as some unexpected wildfires in Peloponnese, Athens and Evia.

With tempers running high in the streets on Friday, members of German Parliament cast their ballots on Greece’s financial future following a tenacious—if rambling—speech by finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble. Both he and Merkel said the deal was a “last attempt” to help Greece, which has taken two previous bailouts in the past five years.