I remember how Angela Merkel’s words travelled far beyond Germany in 2015. Wir schaffen das. We can do it.

From Karachi, the phrase sounded almost startling. Europe was watching hundreds of thousands of people move through Greece and the Balkans, many escaping the Syrian war. Borders were under pressure. Railway stations filled with families carrying bags, children and whatever remained of lives abandoned behind them.

Eleven years later, those four words still follow Merkel.

They are cited by admirers as evidence of humanitarian leadership and by critics as shorthand for a migration policy they believe changed Germany permanently. Yet Europe in 2026 presents a more complicated picture.

The European Union has now put into operation a migration system containing something it conspicuously lacked during the 2015 crisis: a permanent mechanism for sharing responsibility among member states.

That changes the Merkel argument. Perhaps her most important legacy is not that she proved Europe could accept refugees. Nor is it that she caused Europe’s migration divisions. The events since 2015 suggest something less comfortable: Merkel exposed a European solidarity problem that the EU then spent more than a decade trying to institutionalise its way out of.

2015 Was Not Simply the Moment Merkel “Opened the Borders”

The political shorthand is seductive. Merkel opened Germany. Migrants came. Europe changed.

History was messier. Large numbers of refugees and migrants were already moving through the eastern Mediterranean and Western Balkans before Germany’s decisive actions in September 2015. The Syrian civil war had displaced millions. Greece faced intense pressure as people crossed from Turkey, while the existing Dublin asylum system placed disproportionate responsibility on countries at Europe’s external borders.

Germany’s decision not to return certain asylum seekers arriving through Hungary therefore did not create the underlying displacement. It changed how Germany responded to it.

That distinction matters because much of the political argument that followed confused the origin of the refugee movement with Germany’s decision about what to do once people had reached Europe.

Merkel’s policy carried consequences. German municipalities had to find accommodation. Schools absorbed new children. The asylum bureaucracy came under enormous strain, while integration required language teaching and years of public expenditure.

Security controversies also shaped public opinion. The sexual assaults in Cologne on New Year’s Eve 2015 became a political shock. Terrorist attacks involving asylum seekers added another layer of fear. A serious assessment cannot erase those events. It also cannot turn them into a complete description of nearly a million individual lives.

Eleven Years Give Us Evidence That 2015 Did Not

Time has done something political rhetoric could not. It has allowed researchers to follow the people who actually arrived.

The results complicate both triumphalist and catastrophic versions of the Merkel story.

Germany’s Institute for Employment Research (IAB) reports that by 2025 the employment rate among refugees who arrived in 2015 had risen to 67 percent, approaching the level of Germany’s overall population. Earnings rose as well, although they remained below the national median.

That is a substantial change from the first years after arrival. It is not evidence that every integration problem disappeared.

The gender gap remains especially important. Refugee women’s employment is considerably lower than men’s, while regional labour-market conditions also affect outcomes. IAB researchers associate more secure residence status, language and integration programmes, and counselling with better employment and earnings.

So “integration succeeded” is too simple. “Integration failed” is equally difficult to sustain.

The interesting lesson is not that Merkel was vindicated. It is that integration turned out to be a process measured in years rather than newspaper cycles.

Ukraine Exposed Another European Contradiction

Then came February 2022. Russia invaded Ukraine, and millions fled west.

Europe reacted differently. The EU activated its Temporary Protection Directive, giving Ukrainians rapid access to residence, employment and essential services without forcing every displaced person through the normal individual asylum procedure.

The contrast with 2015 was impossible to miss. Poland, which had strongly resisted mandatory refugee relocation during the earlier crisis, became one of the principal destinations for Ukrainians. Other Central and Eastern European countries also received large numbers.

It is tempting to reduce the difference to one explanation: Ukrainians were European, predominantly Christian and culturally closer to their hosts. Cultural proximity may have influenced public attitudes. Yet it cannot explain the whole response.

Ukraine borders the European Union. Russia had launched a conventional interstate invasion on Europe’s doorstep. Ukrainians entered through a specific temporary-protection regime. Many also had family or community connections across neighbouring European states.

The comparison therefore needs care. Still, it revealed something important. Europe could share responsibility rapidly when political agreement existed. The institutional capacity was there. The argument concerned when Europeans were prepared to use it.

The Real Weakness Was European Architecture

This is where I think Merkel’s critics and defenders often talk past each other.

The central European problem in 2015 was not merely the number of people arriving. It was the absence of a politically sustainable mechanism for distributing responsibility.

Germany could admit refugees. Greece could register arrivals. Hungary could build a fence. But the European Union struggled to answer a much more basic question: Who was responsible once an asylum seeker entered the Union?

The Dublin system had an answer on paper. In practice, geography meant that countries on the EU’s external frontier carried an unequal burden. Attempts at relocation then collided with national politics.

Hungary became the clearest symbol of resistance. Viktor Orbán rejected Merkel’s approach and built border barriers. Poland also resisted compulsory redistribution.

Germany could demonstrate national capacity. Merkel could not manufacture European consent.

Eventually, even her government moved towards external control. The 2016 EU-Turkey arrangement sought to reduce irregular crossings into Greece. Europe’s migration policy increasingly combined humanitarian obligations with deterrence, border management and cooperation with countries outside the Union.

Then Europe Built a Different System

It took years of negotiation and political conflict, but the EU eventually rewrote the system.

The Pact on Migration and Asylum was adopted in 2024 and entered into application on 12 June 2026. It combines common procedures with a permanent solidarity mechanism intended to relieve member states facing migratory pressure.

For the first 2026 cycle, the Council set a reference level of 21,000 relocations or other solidarity efforts, or €420 million in financial contributions. Member states can choose relocations, financial contributions or alternative solidarity measures, including combinations of them.

That flexibility matters. It also tells us something about what Europe learned.

The EU did not resolve the dispute by forcing every government to embrace Merkel’s political philosophy. It converted solidarity into a managed obligation.

That is a very European solution.

Solidarity Has Become a Formula

I find this the most interesting development eleven years after 2015.

During the original crisis, solidarity was spoken about almost morally. Governments were expected to help because another member state was under pressure. That model failed politically.

The new system tries something colder. It measures pressure, identifies states requiring assistance and permits different forms of participation.

For the 2026 cycle, Cyprus, Greece, Italy and Spain were identified as being under migratory pressure.

This is no longer Merkel standing before cameras saying Europe can cope. It is European bureaucracy trying to make cooperation survive even when governments disagree.

That distinction should not be dismissed. Institutions often exist precisely because goodwill cannot be guaranteed.

The EU has effectively acknowledged that solidarity cannot depend on another 2015 moment in which one powerful national leader accepts disproportionate political responsibility. But a regulation cannot abolish political conflict either.

Countries still disagree over migration. Governments remain under pressure from voters. Border control has become tougher, while irregular migration remains politically potent across much of the continent.

The Pact manages that conflict. It does not make it disappear.

The Merkel Question Has Changed

For years, European politics asked whether Merkel had been right or wrong. I think that question has become too narrow.

A better one is what her decision revealed about Europe.

Germany demonstrated considerable capacity to integrate people over time. The employment record of the 2015 refugee cohort makes sweeping claims of economic collapse difficult to sustain.

Yet integration was uneven. Women lagged badly in employment. Earnings remained below the national median. Municipalities faced real pressures, and the political consequences of migration proved far more durable than many policymakers expected.

At the European level, another weakness became unmistakable. The EU had created a borderless Schengen area without creating an equally robust system for sharing responsibility when large numbers of asylum seekers crossed that common frontier.

That institutional imbalance existed before Merkel. The events of 2015 exposed it.

Europe Has Not Returned to 2015

Anyone expecting the new migration system to revive Merkel’s Willkommenskultur will be disappointed.

Europe in 2026 is more focused on controlling irregular migration. Screening and border procedures have become more important. Cooperation with countries outside the EU remains central.

The political vocabulary has changed too. Governments speak about returns and border management alongside protection.

This does not look like a continent preparing to repeat 2015. But neither has Europe simply repudiated the lesson of that year.

The solidarity mechanism points in the opposite direction. Europe has accepted, at least institutionally, that states on the external border cannot always carry migration pressure alone.

That principle was precisely what Europe struggled to operationalise when Merkel faced the refugee crisis. The answer arrived eleven years late.

What Merkel Actually Revealed

I started looking again at this story because the familiar argument about Merkel no longer seemed sufficient.

“She saved Europe’s conscience” tells only one part of it. “She opened the borders and broke Europe” tells another.

Eleven years of evidence leave a less convenient picture.

Germany absorbed a large refugee population and gradually integrated many into its labour market. It also encountered genuine integration problems and political backlash.

European governments resisted sharing responsibility. Then, after years of conflict, the EU built a system designed to make some form of solidarity permanent.

The irony is difficult to miss. Europe spent years arguing about Merkel’s decision while slowly constructing institutions to address the weakness that decision had exposed.

Wir schaffen das was never a migration policy. It was a political declaration made during an emergency.

Europe now has something closer to an actual system. Whether that system survives the next major migration shock will tell us more about European solidarity than another decade of arguments over four words spoken by Angela Merkel in 2015.

The next crisis will supply the real test.