Merkel, Consistency, and Humanity
Ten years after the refugee crisis and the famous "We can do it," the former chancellor reminds us of something that many of her "colleagues" seem to have forgotten.
Much can be said about Angela Merkel's politics. After all, sixteen years in the Chancellery — the longest tenure since Otto von Bismarck — is a vast stretch of time, encompassing the eurozone debt crisis, the annexation of Crimea, the pandemic, and the slow erosion of Germany's industrial competitiveness. It would be unlikely for any leader presiding over so many overlapping upheavals to have been infallible, and the current difficulties facing the German economy — sluggish growth, energy-price hangovers from the Ukraine war, a manufacturing sector struggling to pivot — confirm as much. However, there is one thing that no one can reasonably dispute about Merkel. Consistency.
Ten years after her historic declaration "Wir schaffen das" — "We can do it" — uttered at a press conference on August 31, 2015, as hundreds of thousands of refugees streamed through the Balkans toward Germany's borders, the former chancellor reminded the country, in a pair of widely discussed documentaries on ARD and ZDF, of what is ostensibly a foundational European value and which many of today's politicians seem eager to discard. "Human dignity and humanity must be the pillars of migration policy," she told ARD's Ingo Zamperoni, adding with quiet firmness that she had "no doubts" she would make the same decision again.
It is worth recalling the exact words she used in that late-summer press conference a decade ago: "Germany is a strong country. The attitude with which we approach these things has to be: We have done so much — we can do this." The statement was not an improvisation born of naivety. It was a calculated act of leadership by a scientist-turned-statesperson who understood that in moments of collective fear, the most dangerous thing a leader can do is surrender to panic.
The Summer That Changed Europe
To understand the weight of what Merkel said — and what she continues to defend — one must revisit what was happening in the summer and autumn of 2015. The Syrian civil war, by then in its fourth devastating year, had produced the largest displacement crisis since the Second World War. Millions had fled to neighboring Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan, overwhelming those countries' capacities. When conditions in overcrowded camps became unbearable and the prospect of return grew ever more remote, hundreds of thousands began moving toward Europe.
The crisis reached its emblematic climax on September 4, 2015, when thousands of asylum seekers, stranded for days at Budapest's Keleti railway station after the Hungarian government sealed outbound rail traffic, set off on foot along the highway toward Austria. Hungary's Viktor Orbán, who had already begun constructing a razor-wire fence along the Serbian border, denounced the refugees as a threat to European civilization. Other leaders equivocated. Merkel did not. Germany and Austria agreed to admit the stranded thousands. When the first trains arrived at Munich's Hauptbahnhof, volunteers lined the platforms with food, water, toys, and applause. The term "Willkommenskultur" — welcome culture — entered the global lexicon.
Over the course of that year, Germany received more than 442,000 asylum applications, by far the largest number in Europe. By 2016, the total number of refugees who had arrived since the crisis began exceeded one million. They came primarily from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Eritrea — fleeing war, ethnic conflict, and political persecution. The decision not to close the borders was not universally popular, not even within Merkel's own party. Horst Seehofer, then Minister-President of Bavaria and leader of the CDU's sister party, the CSU, publicly declared "wir schaffen das nicht" — "we can't do it" — setting the stage for years of internal conservative tension.
A Matter of Self-Confidence
Merkel's insistence on open borders was not her own invention, nor was it an act of sentimentalism disconnected from European legal and moral frameworks. The principles of humanitarianism and the protection of human dignity are enshrined in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and in the 1951 Refugee Convention. These commitments are not aspirational footnotes; they are, in theory, the constitutional bedrock upon which the entire European project rests. With her decision, Merkel served precisely this foundational purpose. And she continues to defend it — because she simply believes in it.
In May 2025, speaking at the German Protestant Church Assembly (Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag), she reiterated this conviction, emphasizing a distinction that critics had long chosen to ignore: she did not say "I can do it." She said "We can do it." The pronoun was deliberate. It was an expression of faith not in her own capacities but in the resilience, generosity, and organizational strength of German society — in the volunteers who drove to railway stations with blankets, in the municipalities that opened gymnasiums as emergency shelters, in the teachers who created "welcome classes" for children who spoke no German, in the employers who took chances on workers whose qualifications they could not immediately verify.
It was, in other words, a statement of national self-confidence of the kind that Germany, given its history, has often been reluctant to make. Just as Helmut Kohl once declared that the reunified nation would transform the East into "blossoming landscapes" and pressed forward with rapid unification despite warnings from economists and foreign leaders alike — Margaret Thatcher was skeptical, François Mitterrand preferred two democratic Germanys, and most experts cautioned that the cost would be crushing — Merkel bet on Germany's capacity to absorb an unprecedented challenge. Kohl's reunification ultimately cost an estimated two trillion euros in direct transfers, subsidies, and social security payments between 1990 and 2014, and eastern Germany still lags behind the west on nearly every economic indicator. But no serious person today argues that reunification was a mistake. History vindicated the decision, even as it revealed the costs.
The parallel is instructive. Both Kohl and Merkel faced moments where the calculus of cautious technocracy pointed in one direction and the demands of moral and historical leadership pointed in another. Both chose to lead rather than calculate.
The Meaning of Leadership
This is a reality that cannot be ignored: political leadership in difficult times must do just that — lead. It must inspire society with confidence and a sense of shared purpose, not constantly terrorize it with warnings of civilizational collapse. It must channel collective energy toward problem-solving, not freeze it with fear. The alternative — the politics of permanent alarm — is not merely ineffective; it is corrosive. It breeds the very despair and resentment that demagogues then exploit.
Merkel, in her characteristically understated way, has been making this argument with increasing clarity. In her interviews for the ARD documentary "Merkels Erbe — 10 Jahre 'Wir schaffen das!'" she acknowledged that the phrase had been weaponized against her — that she was surprised by "how much those three words were thrown back at me." But she refused to disown them. What she had wanted to express, she explained, was simply that Germany stood before a great challenge and that she placed her faith in the people of the country to rise to it.
This is leadership as orientation rather than omniscience. A leader does not need to have every answer in advance. A leader needs to set a direction, communicate a conviction, and trust the capacities of the society she serves. Churchill did not have a plan for winning the war when he promised blood, toil, tears, and sweat. What he had was a refusal to capitulate — and a belief that his country's people were capable of more than they feared. The comparison is not hyperbolic in its logic, even if the crises differ in scale. The point is structural: leaders who shrink from difficulty do not protect their societies. They diminish them.
The Numbers That Speak
Now Merkel reminds us that "we have achieved a lot" — and the data, collected and analyzed over a decade by Germany's Institute for Employment Research (IAB), emphatically support this claim.
According to the IAB's landmark 2025 study, released to coincide with the tenth anniversary, approximately 64 percent of refugees who arrived in Germany in 2015 were employed by the end of 2024. The employment rate for the general German population in the same period stood at 70 percent — a gap of only six percentage points, and one that continues to narrow. Among working refugees, roughly 90 percent held jobs subject to social insurance contributions, meaning they were fully integrated into the formal economy, paying taxes and contributing to the pension, healthcare, and unemployment insurance systems that sustain Germany's welfare state.
The income trajectory has been equally telling. Median monthly wages for full-time refugee workers rose from 1,398 euros in 2016 to 2,675 euros by 2023, reaching approximately 71 percent of the national median and surpassing the low-wage threshold. Welfare dependence has dropped sharply: by 2023, only 34 percent of working-age refugees from the 2015 cohort still relied on state benefits, compared with nearly 100 percent in the initial years — an inevitable figure, given that asylum seekers are legally barred from working during the application process, which can take months.
Critically, most of these refugees are young. The median age upon arrival was 28 — significantly below the German population average. This demographic reality carries profound implications for a country whose population is aging rapidly and whose labor market faces structural shortages in sectors from healthcare to logistics to hospitality. These people, as the original article rightly noted, "do not cost" anything in any meaningful long-term accounting. They contribute — to GDP, to tax revenues, to social insurance coffers, and to the demographic balance sheet that will determine whether Germany can sustain its welfare model in the coming decades.
Furthermore, an estimated five percent of refugees have launched their own businesses, contributing to the entrepreneurial dynamism that Germany, with its notoriously rigid startup culture, badly needs. Schools absorbed some 250,000 refugee children within two years of the crisis, initially through "welcome classes" with dedicated language support and subsequently through integration into mainstream education. The challenges have not been trivial — many pupils entered grades below their age level, and educational attainment gaps persist — but surveys consistently show high life satisfaction among refugee children and steady improvement in language proficiency.
IAB researcher Yuliya Kosyakova summarized the findings with precision: the labor market integration of refugees who arrived since 2015 has progressed somewhat faster than in previous displacement waves, such as those following the Balkan wars. Seven years after arrival, 63 percent were employed — a figure she described as a clear integration success reflecting the combined efforts of government, employers, and the refugees themselves. Notably, Germany's refugee employment rate exceeds those recorded in comparable European destination countries, including Denmark, Austria, and the Scandinavian nations.
The picture is not without shadows. The gender gap remains stark: by 2024, 76 percent of refugee men were employed, but only 35 percent of women — compared with 72 percent and 69 percent in the general population. The reasons are structural: insufficient childcare availability, language barriers compounded by domestic isolation, and cultural factors that keep many women dependent on partners for information and social interaction. As the researchers note, the greatest untapped potential for economic integration lies precisely here.
Who Fears the AfD
Some accuse Merkel of being personally responsible for the rise of the Alternative for Germany (AfD). The accusation has the virtue of simplicity but not of accuracy. Merkel herself, in her ARD interview, acknowledged a connection with characteristic directness: "The AfD has certainly become stronger because of it," she said, referring to the polarization generated by the 2015 decision. But she immediately added that this was not a reason to avoid making a decision she considered right and necessary.
Correlation is not causation — a principle that the physicist-turned-chancellor understands better than most of her critics. The AfD was founded in 2013, two years before the refugee crisis, initially as an anti-euro party riding the wave of eurozone disillusionment. It subsequently pivoted to anti-immigration politics, exploiting the anxieties that followed 2015 to gain electoral traction. But the far right's rise across Europe — from Marine Le Pen's National Rally in France to Geert Wilders' PVV in the Netherlands to Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy — follows a trajectory that long predates Merkel's border decision and operates on forces far broader than any single policy choice: economic insecurity, cultural anxiety, the erosion of trust in institutions, and the amplifying power of social media.
What is far more difficult to prove — and what the evidence increasingly contradicts — is whether the adoption of far-right rhetoric and policy positions by mainstream parties actually contains the far right or instead legitimizes and strengthens it. This is the central strategic question of European politics in the 2020s, and the German case provides a remarkably clear answer.
The current government under Chancellor Friedrich Merz has pursued what it brands as an "Asylwende" — a turning point on asylum — featuring closed borders, expanded deportations, and the most restrictive migration legislation in modern German history. In January 2025, weeks before the February election, Merz went further still, pushing a non-binding motion through parliament calling for the permanent policing of borders and the entry refusal of all migrants without valid papers. The motion passed 348 to 345 — with the decisive votes coming from the AfD. The so-called "Brandmauer" (firewall) against cooperation with the far right, maintained by all mainstream German parties since the Federal Republic's founding, was breached for the first time at the national level. Outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz called it "an unforgivable mistake." Even Merkel herself broke her customary post-retirement silence to publicly criticize the decision as "wrong."
The results of this strategic capitulation have been precisely the opposite of what its architects intended. Rather than siphoning voters away from the AfD, the adoption of harder-line positions has consistently strengthened the far right. In April 2025, barely six weeks after the February election in which the CDU won 28.5 percent and the AfD 20.8 percent, an Ipsos poll showed the AfD topping a national voter survey for the first time in history, at 25 percent, with the CDU falling to 24 percent. By August 2025, an RTL-commissioned survey put the AfD at 26 percent, ahead of the CDU at 24 percent — a milestone that saw far-right populists leading the polls simultaneously in Germany, France, and Britain for the first time ever. By December, a Forsa poll showed the AfD at 26 percent and the CDU/CSU at 24 percent, with the trend lines still diverging.
The lesson is as stark as it is unwelcome for the current generation of center-right leaders: you cannot out-radical the radicals. Every concession to the far-right agenda validates its framing, normalizes its language, and signals to voters that the extremists were right all along — so why not vote for the original? The experience of Austria, where the center-right ÖVP's adoption of FPÖ positions did nothing to prevent the far right from eventually entering government, tells the same story. So does France, where decades of Republican flirtation with Le Pen's themes have produced not containment but normalization.
A Real Problem
As was rightly emphasized in the documentary programming surrounding the anniversary, the refugee-migration issue has never left the European political agenda since 2015. But this is not Merkel's doing. The drama in Syria — a civil war that began in 2011 as a peaceful uprising against Bashar al-Assad's regime and metastasized into a multi-front proxy conflict involving regional and global powers — was not caused by the German chancellor. The subsequent refugee crises, from the Mediterranean drownings to the squalor of camps on Lesbos, from the bodies of 71 suffocated migrants found in a truck on an Austrian highway in August 2015 to the haunting image of three-year-old Alan Kurdi washed up on a Turkish beach, are chapters of a humanitarian catastrophe whose authors sit in Damascus, Moscow, Tehran, and various other capitals.
Merkel herself acknowledges, with the honesty that has always been her most underappreciated quality, that as head of the German government she should perhaps have acted differently in 2012–2013, when the Syrian conflict was escalating but had not yet produced mass displacement toward Europe. Earlier diplomatic engagement, more robust support for refugee-hosting neighboring countries, greater pressure for international burden-sharing — these are the might-have-beens that occupy her in retrospect. But history, as she rightly observes, is not written with speculation. What can be judged are the decisions actually taken in the face of the crisis as it actually unfolded.
Today, Friedrich Merz is seeking to "repair" Merkel's policies — a word used by one of the commentators in the ARD documentary that carries a weight of implications worth unpacking. The term presupposes that something was broken, which is already a contested framing. It also contains what can only be described as an element of hetero-determination: the current chancellor defining his predecessor's legacy in order to justify his own departures from it. Merz does indeed use his disagreement with Merkel's approach too often — and too instrumentally — as a rhetorical device to legitimize his current decisions. When he first ran for the CDU leadership in 2018, he declared that the party could "again reach up to 40 percent of the vote and halve the AfD." The voter dynamic has moved in precisely the opposite direction.
Merkel herself treats all of this with equanimity — with the serene detachment of someone who has already left the arena and can see the longer arc. When asked about Merz's criticisms, she does not rise to the bait. She does not need to. Perhaps because from her current position — free of electoral pressure, unburdened by coalition arithmetic — she can better appreciate what every serious student of political history already knows: that ultimately, history will judge them all. And history has a habit of being kinder to those who led with conviction than to those who governed by focus group.
The Verdict of Time
There is a particular irony in the timing of this anniversary. Ten years after "Wir schaffen das," the data overwhelmingly suggest that Germany has, in fact, "done it" — imperfectly, unevenly, with significant challenges remaining, but substantially and measurably. Two-thirds of the refugees are working. Their children are in school. Their tax contributions flow into the social systems. Their businesses create jobs. Their youth offsets, however modestly, the demographic time bomb ticking beneath Germany's pension system.
And yet the political class has largely abandoned the language of confidence that made this possible. The rhetoric of welcome has been replaced by the rhetoric of siege. The Willkommenskultur has given way to the Asylwende. The firewall against the far right has been breached. And none of it — none of the border closures, the deportation flights, the tough talk, the legislative crackdowns — has slowed the AfD's rise by a single percentage point. If anything, it has accelerated it.
Merkel's reminder, then, is not merely nostalgic. It is diagnostic. It identifies precisely the pathology afflicting European politics: the belief that you can defeat fear by feeding it. That you can outrun the far right by chasing it. That strength consists of harshness rather than steadfastness. She offers no easy answers — she never did — but she offers something rarer and more valuable: a coherent moral framework, tested by crisis and vindicated by evidence, in which human dignity is not an obstacle to effective governance but its prerequisite.
Whether today's leaders are capable of hearing this message — let alone acting on it — remains, ten years later, the open question of European democracy.