Angela Merkel may have won praise from the world for Germany’s open-door policy on refugees, but a confused and divided Europe is feeling the fallout from the decision. The German chancellor’s sudden move in early September to welcome asylum seekers from Syria opened bitter rifts in the EU and raised fears for the future of the passport-free Schengen zone.
And while TIME magazine named Merkel as 2015’s person of the year and US President Barack Obama hailed her courage, in Europe she is increasingly being accused of exacerbating the biggest migration crisis since World War II. With no clear challengers to her role in Germany or in Europe, Merkel must once again take the lead in guiding Europe towards a lasting solution.
Merkel applied international and European law by refusing to turn away refugees fleeing war in Syria. Preventing people from coming would have also led to catastrophe. What’s happening in Europe is, before everything else, a crisis for Europe, European institutions, the European project.
Within the EU, Hungary’s hardline Prime Minister Viktor Orban has railed against Merkel’s “moral imperialism” and eastern European nations have accused Merkel of encouraging migrants to stream though their countries to Germany. Merkel seemed unprepared for the subsequent surge in asylum seekers from Turkey to Greece and then up through the Balkans to Hungary, Austria, Germany and northern Europe.
So far this year, Germany, Europe’s top economic power, has registered nearly a million new asylum seekers fleeing war and poverty.
After the initial influx, Germany then reintroduced temporary checks at its borders within Europe’s sprawling passport-free Schengen zone, triggering a “domino effect” as other countries followed suit.
Temporary checks are allowed under the rules for the 26-country Schengen zone - a pillar of the European project alongside the euro currency - but the free-travel area could collapse in the face of the migrant crisis. The great danger lurking over the Schengen zone is that the member states permanently keep checks on the internal borders in breach of the rules.
Merkel has failed to prepare for the surge in asylum seekers, which has made her own domestic situation more shaky. Her response has thrust Germany into an ambiguous leadership role. Having welcomed refugees, Berlin now has no option but to take the lead inside the EU in establishing a sustainable policy.
So far, the jury is out whether she can do this as Europe struggles to forge a joint response to the refugee crisis. Along with Jean-Claude Juncker, head of the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, Merkel has led a drive to relocate 160,000 asylum seekers from frontline states Greece and Italy to other members of the bloc.  
Preaching the need for European solidarity, Merkel and Juncker have also pushed for a permanent relocation scheme to respond to future migrant surges and for a plan to resettle refugees from camps in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. But there is still massive resistance to plans to relocate and settle asylum seekers in Europe.