Merkel against set limit to number of migrants

When she showed the world that refugees needed to be welcomed: 2015 was the year when the refugee crisis reached its pinnacle and while Europe refused to open its arms or heart to refugees who fled their war-ravaged home, Germany, led by Angela Merkel did.

The bloodthirsty al-Baghdadi probably deserved the selection as the most consequential figure of the year, but Time did everyone a favor by picking Merkel instead.

“Preventing people from coming would have also led to catastrophe”, Tardis told AFP.

The future of the Schengen zone has been thrown into doubt because of the refugee crisis.

From helping avert a “Grexit”, to taking a leading diplomatic role mediating the conflict in Ukraine, to spearheading Europe’s response to the refugee crisis, 2015 has been a landmark year for Merkel.

Judy Dempsey, a Carnegie Europe analyst, wrote last month that Merkel had failed to prepare for the surge in asylum seekers, which had made her own domestic situation more shaky. You can agree with her or not, but she is not taking the easy road.

But after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 she found a new calling in politics.

The other individual women to win were Wallis Simpson (1936), Queen Elizabeth II (1952), and Corazon Aquino (1986), as reported by BBC.

And that is why she is their person of the year. Eight years later, she was sworn in for her third term in Germany’s highest office.

Affectionately nicknamed “Mutti”, or “mommy” by the German public, she has a modest personal style, having lived in the same ordinary apartment building for more than a decade, and frequently attending soccer games with her second husband, a quantum chemist and professor.

No, Donald Trump is not Person of the Year.

The magazine said the German chancellor had “stepped in” every time a serious crisis had threatened European statecraft this year.

Time Managing Editor Nancy Gibbs announced the victor on NBC’s “Today Show” on Wednesday.

Trump responded to Merkel’s selection on his Twitter account, saying that he wasn’t surprised that Time hadn’t picked him, “despite being the big favorite”. “They picked person who is ruining Germany”, Trump said in a tweet.