Merkel acknowledges crisis could overwhelm Germany if influx continues — European Union migrant crisis

Europe has not yet overcome the euro zone crisis and mistakes made by the founders of the currency project still need to be addressed, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Monday.

This comes ahead of her party, Christian Democratic Union, holding a two-day congress starting 14 December, where the issue of the resettlement of refugees in the country will be up for debate.

Urging her party to believe in itself, she cited Germany’s transformation in the last decade – from sick man to European powerhouse – as proof of what was possible when people embraced change to cope with a huge challenge.

While sticking to her approach, Merkel underscored her aim of getting migrant numbers down.

“If our courage had failed us, Germany would have been a different country today”, she said.

Merkel described the current refugee crisis as a historical test for Europe. But thanks to some agile negotiating on the eve of the congress on Sunday night, Merkel managed to impose what she portrays as a principled stand, the conservatives in the CDU felt they had secured a good compromise, and the entire CDU – which has no clear successor to Merkel in sight – was relieved that any doubts about the third-term chancellor’s authority over her party had been dispelled.

Receiving all the refugees coming to Germany was “no more and no less than a humanitarian imperative”, she told party delegates.

Merkel may yet face more resistance from within her own party to some details of her refugee policy.

“The message is: we want to reduce”, Merkel said in the interview from Karlsruhe.

And she chose to hark back to the CDU’s greatest post-war chancellors to explain her actions, name-checking Konrad Adenauer, who led Germany through its post-1945 reconstruction, and Helmut Kohl, on whose watch the country was finally reunited in 1990.

“And that is why we want to and will tangibly reduce the number of refugees arriving”.

“The war in Syria, the barrel bombings by (the regime of Syrian President Bashar) Assad, the spread of IS (Isil) in Syria and Iraq, the fact that Libya has no functioning government, the situation in Afghanistan – all that is no longer far away but has come to us”, she added.

Merkel’s speech on Monday, regarded as the “strongest” one on her course in the refugee policy, has greeted with standing ovation and minutes-long applause from CDU members. Other EU countries have resisted German pressure to share refugees by quota. “I know that the European wheels grind slowly, but we will get them grinding”.

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