Chancellor Angela Merkel, the front-runner in next month’s German election, said she’d change nothing in her approach to Europe’s refugee crisis two years ago if she had the chance. “I would make all of the important decisions of 2015 the same way again,” Merkel was quoted as saying in a Welt am Sonntag newspaper interview published Sunday. Four weeks before Germany’s election on Sept. 24, the comments underscore her conviction that there was a humanitarian need to open the border when a record influx of refugees made their way through southern and eastern Europe to Germany that year, Bloomberg reported. Part of the problem in the buildup to the 2015 crisis is that Mediterranean countries such as Greece and Italy were too often left alone by other European Union countries to deal with refugees arriving from outside the bloc, Merkel was quoted as saying. She renewed her campaign pledge that Germany “should never again witness” such an emergency.
