Merkel confirms We can do this - refugee policy in change!

Merkel confirms We can do this - refugee policy in change!

Angela Merkel confirmed on May 1, 2025, ten years after the 2015 refugee movement, her famous sentence "We can do that" at the Evangelical Church Day in Hanover. This sentence expresses their trust in the helpfulness of people in Germany. In her statements, she also made it clear that she was aware of the challenges associated with the admission of refugees. Merkel demanded that people who do not have a right of residence have to leave Germany, while those who need help should continue to be accepted. In doing so, she clearly positions herself from the migration course of her successor, Friedrich Merz from the CDU, who plans to better control the state borders and carry out rejections to a greater extent.

Chancellor Minister Thorsten Frei announced that from May 6th, everyone who wants to enter Germany illegally will be rejected at the border. These measures illustrate the change in refugee policy, which has been observed since Merkel's decision -making in 2015.

Review of the 2015 refugee crisis

The refugee crisis, which reached its peak in summer 2015, had far -reaching consequences for Germany and Europe. Angela Merkel held a summer press conference on August 31, 2015, which was postponed due to a crisis meeting of the EU Council. However, this session was not about the refugee crisis, but about the "grexit", which led to tensions with the then finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble. From this point on, the number of migrants, especially Syrians who traveled to Central Europe via the Balkan route, increased. The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) was overwhelmed and was no longer able to process the asylum applications in a timely manner. Syrians were granted asylum without personal conversations.

Merkel described the need for "German flexibility" and tried to bring a "standard deviation law" by the Federal Council to accommodate asylum seekers in vacant properties. Your sentence "We can do it!" became the central motto of refugee policy, although it was not originally intended as a historical quote. In retrospect, it can be observed that the refugee crisis and the associated political debates, including the increase in support for right -wing populist parties, have had a strong impact on society.

The development of European refugee policy

European refugee policy has undergone significant changes since the 2015 crisis. At the end of 2023 there was a record number of 118 million people on the run. The number of asylum applications in the European Union has increased in recent years, especially through conflicts such as war in Ukraine. Statistics show that over 3 million asylum applications were made in the EU from 2014 to 2016 alone. The number of 531,000 applications in 2014 grew to 1.22 million in 2015.

In the same year, over 857,000 migrants were brought to Europe via the eastern Mediterranean route and 764,038 via the western Balkans. The EU measures for border security, including the 2016 EU Türkiye deal, have a decisive influence on control over the flows of refugees. However, critics fear that these measures, together with the reforms of the common European asylum system, will not lead to a fair distribution of asylum seekers.

The challenges in refugee policy are still present, even if the focus is now on other topics such as Corona pandemic. Angela Merkel remains a formative figure in this debate, and her words from 2015 have not pushed themselves into the background despite the upheavals. Political sensitivity to refugee policy is still acute, as the continuing discussions about terms such as "crisis" and "opening of the border" show.