"It's an illusion to assume that everything will be fine if we turn refugees back at Germany's border," Angela Merkel says.

Germany’s former Chancellor Angela Merkel sees the successful integration of migrants as the responsibility of the Germans. „There is no integration without the openness and willingness to change on part of the host society. This requires a minimum level of knowledge about other cultures, because you have to be interested in them,” she told Der Spiegel in a recent interview.

Merkel upholds that it was the right decision that Germany kept its borders open during the 2015 migration wave. She says that not to have done so would have discredited all the talk about European values and human dignity. The former chancellor also rejects the idea of turning back illegal migrants at the border, as demanded by the CDU/CSU, her former party alliance.

„I still don’t think that’s right. It’s an illusion to assume that everything will be fine if we turn refugees back at Germany’s border,”

said Angela Merkel.

The ex-chancellor’s autobiography will be released next week. In the book, we can also read about her memories of the migrants in Hungary in 2015, who reminded the former chancellor of the GDR. Merkel also defends her selfies with migrants, which made her famous and immortal in the Arab world as „Mutti Merkel”. However, she has always taken people’s fears of terrorism and Islamism seriously, Merkel said in the interview.