“Do we stand by what our constitution says about human dignity?” she said.
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“Germany will remain Germany, with all that we hold most precious and dear”, Mrs Merkel said in an interview with Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.
The offer was made by German Chancellor Angela Merkel after a summit meeting with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi in Maranello, the home of Ferrari, near Modena in northern Italy.
“If you has asked me before the press conference if I thought a particular phrase would become quoted, I would not have named this phrase”, she said.
The German leader was speaking a year to the day after she after she won praise and criticism in equal measure for signalling an open door policy on refugees by declaring “we can do this”, referring to people fleeing the conflict in Syria.
“We didn’t embrace the problem in an appropriate way”, she added.
Merkel also admitted that back then Germany refused the option of a proportional allocation of refugees, Efe news reported on Wednesday.
She said Germany, which has taken in most of the more than 1 million refugees from the Middle East and Asia who arrived in the European Union in the past year, had let Spain and other European Union border countries deal with the refugees on their own.
“In 2004 and 2005, many refugees came and we let Spain and others at the outer borders deal with it”. Germany registered over a million newcomers previous year, though the actual number is believed to be lower, and the influx has unsettled many residents.
The three-term chancellor said refugees will be a long-term issue.
Merkel and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi held their second meeting in as many weeks, but whereas the previous talks focused on the response to Britain’s decision to leave the European Union, these talks were dominated by the August 24 quake.
A number of Germans had always had a certain racism toward foreigners and were willing to commit violent acts for that cause, but that tendency had grown over the past year, she said.
Merkel also rejected the notion that there was a direct connection between terrorism and accommodating so many migrants in the country.
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“This is reflected in our constitution and our laws, our liberty, our democracy, in our overwhelming commitment to a social market economy”.
