German Chancellor Angela Merkel | Sean Gallup/Getty Images Angela Merkel: Refugee surge won’t happen again Priority is to repatriate as many failed asylum seekers as possible.

Chancellor Angela Merkel assured politicians of her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) that Germany will not admit as many refugees as it did last year.

German press agency dpa — that was informed about a private meeting of CDU’s executive board — reported on Friday that Merkel told politicians they can go public with it: the refugee crisis of 2015 will not be repeated.

"[In] the next few months, the most important [thing] is to return refugees," Merkel told them. Repatriating migrants who either don't qualify for asylum or those, whose requests have been rejected would free up capacity for people, fleeing war and prosecution to remain in Germany.

In 2015, Merkel's open door policy to refugees resulted in a massive influx into the country. Germany recorded about a million new arrivals, according to estimates.

Representatives of CSU, the Bavarian sister party of Merkel's CDU welcomed the chancellor's plan to send more refugees back in the coming months. Max Straubinger, the party’s parliamentary secretary in the Bundestag, told the Huffington Post that his party “had demanded that for a long time.”

Merkel said earlier this week that she remains confident that migrants who had arrived in the country over the last year will successfully integrate into German society.

According to an opinion poll that was published Thursday, Merkel's approval rating has fallen to 45 percent, which is the lowest in five years. The country's most popular politician is Foreign Affairs Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, according to the poll.