The Chancellor won a battle with the right-wing of the CDU in the run-up to the gathering by torpedoing its bid to set a cap on the number of asylum seekers Germany would take in – a proposal she has denounced as immoral and unconstitutional.
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Receiving all the refugees coming to Germany was “no more and no less than a humanitarian imperative”, she told party delegates.
Refugees granted a permit to stay will not be allowed to bring their families to join them in Germany for two years, she added.
Despite the humanitarian move, the arrival of so many refugees in Germany has resulted in a xenophobic backlash from far-right groups with a rising number of cases of arson attacks on refugee shelters, assaults, and swastikas sprayed on walls.
Lining up behind their party leader and Germany’s chancellor of 10 years, delegates responded with cheers, whoops and nearly 10 minutes of applause after Dr Merkel finished. “This is a historic test for Europe and I want – hopefully I can say we all want – for Europe to pass this test”.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is facing a congress of her conservative party amid tensions over her management of the migrant influx.
While Germany has reintroduced border controls in the Autumn to face the crisis, Merkel reaffirmed her commitment to the Schengen free-travel area.
“We must create the possibility to turn back people at our borders who are evidently not politically persecuted”, he said.
“We want to noticeably reduce the number of people who come to us, but not through unilateral national measures alone, but by looking at why refugees have to leave their homes in the first place”.
Germany has seen about a million migrants arrive this year.
Saturday Night Live’s Kate McKinnon hilariously appeared as German Chancellor Angela Merkel to discuss being named Time magazine 2015 Person of the Year on the show’s long-running Weekend Update segment.
While Merkel rejected calls for an upper limit on the number of refugees Germany will accept, she did announce a number of restrictions to reduce the record flow of refugees.
But the vibe in Karlsruhe was largely positive, in contrast to the mood in Berlin last week when the rival Social Democrats (SPD) held their own congress and sanctioned their leader Sigmar Gabriel for failing to make more of Merkel’s vulnerability in the refugee crisis.
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Ms Merkel said that achieving a genuine reduction in refugee numbers depended on Germany backing tougher measures on the EU’s frontiers, with special emphasis on the sea between Greece and Turkey, which has been crossed by thousands of Syrian refugees. Merkel went on to stress that “above all”, migrants must learn to speak German to properly integrate into society.
