Merkel wants drop in number of refugees to Germany

Germany will reduce the influx of migrants coming in, Chancellor Angela Merkel promised her conservative party on Monday, insisting that she’s still confident her approach will work and Europe will pass its “historical test”.

Thomson ReutersGerman Chancellor Merkel addresses a session of the German lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, in BerlinChancellor Angela Merkel is shutting the door on her open door policy for refugees coming to Germany – the very policy that got her nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize and her accolade as Time’s Person of the Year. Merkel does not face a leadership vote at this year’s congress, having won re-election last year with 96.7 percent of CDU delegates’ votes.

Merkel told a congress of her Christian Democratic Union Monday that her decision in early September to let in migrants who had piled up in Hungary was “a humanitarian imperative”.

Critics believed that her current policy was inappropriate and demanded a cap on the number of refugees entering Germany.

Her strategy includes working with Turkey to fight traffickers, improving the situation at Syrian refugee camps in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, and strengthening control of the European Union’s outer borders.

Merkel defended her catchphrase of “we can do this” during the refugee crisis by saying the party must show its Christian roots, and she likened it to pledges made by former conservative chancellors Konrad Adenauer and Helmut Kohl in troubled times.

There was “the opportunity that billions of people can have no fear for their future if the commitments are also really fulfilled”, she said.

If she did, analysts say she could suffer a similar fate to her vice chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, head of the Social Democrats (SPD), junior partners in the left-right “grand coalition” government.

“I’m trying to celebrate”, McKinnon says while anxiously moving around in her chair.

The German media portrayed Merkel’s appearance in Karlsruhe as “one of the most important speeches in her career”, although she still enjoys – in her third term – high support among the German public and in the ranks of the CDU.

Germany, Europe’s top economic power, is split roughly down the middle on the refugee question.