German Chancellor Angela Merkel gave the most vital speech of her political career today as she defended her open-door asylum policies while pledging to reduce the numbers pouring into Germany.
Mindful of her plunging poll numbers and a backdrop of rising violence, she told the party faithful at the annual congress of her CDU conservative party: 'We want to significantly reduce the number of refugees. Otherwise Germany will be overwhelmed in the long term.'
At first she said opening the borders to tens of thousands of refugees in appalling conditions in Hungary was 'a humanitarian gesture, no more and no less'.
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