COTTBUS, Germany -- Germany's Greens, the junior partner of the ruling coalition, on Saturday opened a weekend congress where they were expected to tame their normally fractious style to back Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's controversial economic and social reform package.

Although a left-wing minority of Greens have branded the package "socially unjust", delegates at the two-day gathering in the eastern city of Cottbus are set to approve the reforms, widely seen as the unpopular government's last chance to drive down chronic unemployment and shore up the pension system.

Known as Agenda 2010, the legislation proposed by Schroeder in March would cut unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless, make it easier for companies to hire and fire workers and raise the retirement age.

Environment Minister Juergen Trittin, quoted in the German daily ******Die Welt****** on Saturday, said he expected a "large and solid majority" of the some 830 Green delegates to back the raft of reforms in a vote on Sunday.

Founded 23 years ago on a platform of grassroots democracy, ecology, social justice and pacifism, the Greens have evolved into one of Germany's strongest forces for economic reform.

Because the package is full of bitter pills for Germans accustomed to the country's lavish social welfare system, important lobbies including the powerful trade unions have opposed it.

Several dozen union activists were out to greet the Greens in Cottbus with protests against Agenda 2010. Yet there appears to be an emerging consensus that Germany, facing next to stagnant economic growth and an aging population can no longer afford to offer the same cradle-to-grave benefits it once did.

Schroeder's Social Democrats overwhelmingly backed the reforms on June 1.

The package is to be written into legislation in the late summer, when it will likely face parliament. Although the conservative opposition Christian Union parties have a majority in the upper house, they have pledged not to stand in the way of the reforms.