Merkel: EU can’t let Greece fall into ‘chaos’ in refugee crisis

“Do you really think that all the euro countries last year fought to the last-and we were the toughest-to keep Greece in the eurozone, only to plunge Greece into chaos, so to speak, a year later?”

Merkel – who had long sparred with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, demanding strict austerity in return for billions in EU-IMF bailouts – said she was now in close contact with the leftist leader on the refugee influx. She also defended her decision to open German borders to migrants, despite a resulting slump in her popularity.

Austria has already imposed a similar limit in defiance of the European Commission, which warned it was illegal under worldwide law.

“We must act as quickly as possible to significantly reduce the need for refugees to flee to Europe”, Schaeuble said at the Saturday briefing in Shanghai.

Mrs Merkel said she does not have a backup plan to the biggest migration crisis facing the continent since the Second World War.

Germany faces another issue after the government admitted it had lost around 130,000 migrants after they failed to show up at reception centres they had been sent to. For example, a recent poll by the German commercial television channel N-TV showed only 46 percent of respondents supported Merkel, the lowest rating for the German Chancellor since 2011.

The criticism came after finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble labelled Social Democrat proposals for wider social spending on housing and public services to complement the integration of migrants as “pitiful”.

On a visit to Washington on Monday Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the scenes at the Macedonian border that “are proof that we can try and find national solutions, but they won’t solve anything”.

“The finance minister obviously just doesn’t get it”, Weil told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. So too does the majority of Germans in the ARD survey.

Austria and several Balkan countries have introduced restrictions stranding migrants in Greece.

Merkel was firm that Europe should not leave Greece all alone in dealing with the migrant crisis and that the European Union cannot allow Greece to fall into chaos.

Merkel has continued to lose support and the trust of the population because of her open-door asylum policy. “What’s more important? The people in the country or balancing the budget?”

Pointing to the high cost of integrating migrants, Weil said: “We can not create the impression that this is happening at the expense of the weaker members of our society”. “The euro crisis was a huge challenge”, said Merkel. In what Welt am Sonntag called a “clear threat to the EU”, sources said Germany was considering turning away asylum-seekers at the border.