German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday that the EU cannot allow Greece to plunge into “chaos” by shutting European borders to refugees.

“Do you seriously believe that all the euro states that last year fought all the way to keep Greece in the eurozone – and we were the strictest – can one year later allow Greece to, in a way, plunge into chaos?” she said in a TV interview with with public broadcaster ARD.

Mrs Merkel also criticised the move by Austria and other Balkan countries included in the so-called Western Balkan route to introduce border controls or cap daily migrant arrivals, creating a bottleneck in Greece while refugees continue to arrive from Turkey, AFP reports.

“What has happened is exactly what we feared, that a country is now left alone with its problems, and we can’t allow that,” Mrs. Merkel said.

The German Chancellor insisted that she remained optimistic on dealing with the refugee crisis, and vowed that “it’s my damn duty and obligation to do everything possible for Europe to find a united path.”