The beleaguered Chancellor risked a fresh revolt from within her own party’s ranks after shock statistics painted an astonishing picture of the burden being placed on the EU’s biggest economy.
In the first nine months of last year, Germany ruled on a jaw-dropping 420,000 requests for asylum, which was 84,000 more than all other EU countries combined.
Merkel: We must combat terrorism together with humanity
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And of the just under a million asylum applications made during the same period an overwhelming two-thirds were lodged in Germany, underlining the disproportionate burden being placed on the country.
The revelations will heap enormous pressure on Mrs Merkel as critics continue to tear into her open borders policy in light of the horrific Berlin terror attack last month.
They will also pose yet more awkward questions for the European Union, which has attempted to portray a united front on the question of immigration but which is riven by deep divisions over the issue between member states.
The shock figures were released just days after the under-fire leader was criticised in some quarters over her bizarre New Year’s Eve address to the German people, in which she urged them to combat Islamist terror with love and compassion.
In her annual TV address she said that ordinary Germans should continue to risk their lives going to public events so they could “counter the terrorists’ hate with our humanity and our solidarity”.
But political opponents immediately pointed out that the Chancellor is surrounded at all times by armed guards and has an entire secret service working around the clock to keep her safe - a luxury not afforded to ordinary citizens.
And even Mrs Merkel’s allies rounded on her over her asylum policies today with the revelation that Germany is doing far more than the rest of Europe to deal with the consequences of the migrant crisis.
Johannes Singhammer, a vice-president of the German parliament and a member of the Christian Social Union - the sister party to Mrs Merkel’s ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU) - said the figures were proof that “the refugee crisis in Germany has not been overcome”.
He told Die Welt: "The oft-quoted notion that Europe is shifting responsibility for taking in refugees to the southern countries simply doesn't hold when you look at the figures."
The next most popular country with asylum seekers last year was Italy, but it still processed less than one sixth of the number of requests lodged in Germany for the same period.
And critics of mass migration in Germany will point to measures taken in neighbouring Denmark, which has tightened border controls and pushed through plans to confiscate migrants’ valuables to pay for their housing.
The nordic country saw the number of asylum applications it received fall off a cliff, tumbling from around 21,000 in 2015 to just 5,300 in the first nine months of last year.
Europe has been in the grip of a spiralling asylum crisis for the last 18 months, with more than 1.3 million people arriving on the continent including economic migrants and refugees fleeing war and persecution.