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Germany’s
taciturn chancellor surprised the country this week with an
uncharacteristically frank speech apologizing for her handing of the
refugee crisis. Angela Merkel’s contrite comments came after her party
suffered dismal results in state elections this month, losing support to
the upstart anti-immigrant party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).
In
a 20-minute press conference yesterday (Sept. 19), the chastened
chancellor said her government made mistakes in its refugee policy over
the past 18 months. More than a million migrants came to Germany last
year, five times more than the year before, boosted by the country’s open-door policy for refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other war-torn countries.
“For some time, we didn’t have enough control,” Merkel said. “No one wants a repeat of last year’s situation, including me.”
She also expressed regret for her go-to mantra over the past year, “we can manage this” (“wir shaffen das”).
She said she didn’t want to use it any more as it was a “simple slogan,
an empty formula.” She acknowledged that some people felt “provoked by
this sentence, and that was never the aim.”
While
many took her speech as an apology for her open-door refugee policy,
this was not the case. Merkel’s words were nuanced and her fighting
spirit clear. She didn’t apologize for her decision to open the borders
to refugees last year, which she described at the time
as “doing what is morally and legally obliged.” In retrospect, this was
“absolutely correct on balance,” Merkel said, in typically measured
tones. She did admit, however, that the government could have been
better prepared for the influx of asylum seekers.
“If I was able to, I would turn back time by many, many years, so that I
could have prepared the whole government and the authorities for the
situation which hit us out of the blue in the late summer of 2015,” she
said.
REUTER
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