Angela Merkel has defended her decision to open German borders to unregistered refugees, only to introduce controls on Sunday, saying the impulse was right and had shown Germany’s “friendly, beautiful face” to the world.

Speaking in Berlin after a meeting with her Austrian counterpart, Werner Faymann, Merkel said she had faced a humanitarian emergency two weeks ago, as tens of thousands of exhausted refugees waited to enter the country. She had, exceptionally, agreed to let them in, she said.

The German chancellor rejected claims that her decision had made Europe’s refugee crisis worse by encouraging others to head for Germany. She said that images of volunteers greeting refugees at Munich’s main train station had gone round the world. “If we had not shown a friendly face, that’s not my country,” she said.

German chancellor Angela Merkel calls for a special European Union summit next week to discuss the continent’s migration crisis. Guardian

Merkel was speaking for the first time since Germany suspended rail travel on Sunday between Vienna and Munich and introduced new police controls on its Bavarian road borders with Austria. She said the measures were driven by security concerns and the need to restore an “orderly regime” for processing refugees. The country’s borders were open, she insisted.

The EU is to hold an emergency meeting to discuss its response to the crisis, which Merkel has described as “one of Europe’s biggest challenges in decades”. The summit is likely to agree new hotspots in Greece and Italy where asylum seekers can have their claims processed.

Faymann was scathing about Hungary’s latest shut-out of refugees, who are now stranded on the Serbian side of the border behind a large razor-wire fence. “You can’t just stick your head in the sand,” he said, complaining that some countries were passing the buck to others. “It’s about people who have a right to asylum,” he said.

Faymann again suggested the eastern European states that shot down a Brussels plan for mandatory refugee quotas should have the money they get from EU structural funds cut. They had failed to understand European solidarity, he said.

Germany’s interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, also said pressure should be applied to rejectionist nations such as Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

Prague blamed Germany for the crisis on Tuesday, echoing criticism last week from Hungary’s hardline populist prime minister, Viktor Orbán. The Czech interior minister, Milan Chovanec, tweeted: “The current biggest problem of solving migration is an inconsistent policy of Germany.”

Merkel was due to meet the presidents of Germany’s 16 federal regions later on Tuesday. It was their complaints that their capacities were exhausted that triggered Sunday’s border controls. The regions want Berlin to give them an extra €1bn (£734m) towards accommodating and feeding refugees in 2015, and €3bn more in 2016.



Merkel was diplomatic about the refusal of other EU countries, with the exception of Sweden and Austria, to shoulder the burden. She said: “We cannot manage this challenge by looking at someone else and telling them: ‘You’ve made this mistake.’”

Her Social Democratic vice-chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, however, said that Germany’s capacity was not limitless and that “Europe has once more disgraced itself”.

On Monday he predicted that a million refugees might arrive in Germany this year, up from an original estimate of 800,000. About 170,000 came in August, and 76,000 in July.



The Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party to Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), has said her decision to allow in unregistered refugees was “an unparalleled historical mistake”.

Some in her own party have also expressed doubts. On Tuesday, however, she repeated the same optimistic phrase she used late last month, when she argued that Germany was a strong country able to cope. “I say again, we can do it and we will do it,” she said.