&gt; “Chancellor of the Free World.”<p>Merkel took only charge because everybody else didn&#x27;t and the other European leaders indirectly expected her to lead them in the Ukraine crisis and the refugee crisis.<p>In my opinion there are two problems with the refugee crisis: (1) for many years the calls for help from Spain&#x2F;Italy&#x2F;Greece have been ignored and the refugee problem was swept under the mat. And now since Syria everyone is unprepared because no sensible policy was created back then. (2) the EU members from eastern europe wanted to join the EU for economic gain and protection from Russia. Now they have to realize that the EU is a union and not a economic aid programme. But this is also a consequence of problem nr.1 because it was politically ignored to set policies for distributing refugees in the EU.