Berlin "is aware of the great challenges" faced by transit countries including Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary and Croatia, said Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert.
"At the same time repelling refugees at the borders, in the view of the German government, does not contribute to a sustainable solution to the current refugee problem," he said.
Seibert said that for "this humanitarian challenge, probably Europe's greatest since the Second World War, there are no purely national solutions, but only a solution in which Europe as a whole gets together and constructively and collectively addresses the problem".