'Yes, we did it,' Merkel says of 2015 refugee influx

Outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel in an interview which aired on Sunday said Germany had managed the 2015 refugee crisis which saw hundreds of thousands of people come to Germany, reported dpa.

In an interview with broadcaster Deutsche Welle, Merkel was asked to look back on a well-known quote from 2015, when she said "Wir schaffen das," or "we can do this" about Germany taking in an unprecedented number of refugees at the time.

"Yes, we did it. But by 'we', I mean a truly large number of people in Germany who helped get it done: many mayors, many volunteers," and the many who are still supporting their new friends, neighbours and co-workers, the chancellor told Deutsche Welle.

She admitted that "not everything went exactly as it should." But Merkel considered it a major success to see how many refugees the country took in, many of whom now permanently live and work in Germany.

Merkel named the refugee crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic as "the two events I personally found most challenging" in her time as chancellor.

"Maybe these were the crises where we clearly saw how people are being directly affected, where human lives hang in the balance. For me, those were the biggest challenges," she added.

Merkel said the European Union still needs to find "a common system for addressing asylum and migration" and create "a self-regulating balance between the countries of origin and those where refugees first arrive," in order to better help refugees and fight the root causes of why people flee.