by Our Foreign Desk

GERMAN Chancellor Angela Merkel said yesterday that she would stick to her course over Europe’s refugee crisis after state elections registered a rise in backing for the xenophobic Alliance for Germany (AfD).

Ms Merkel acknowledged that Sunday’s three state elections, which produced painful losses for her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), had been dominated by the migrant issue.

However, “I am firmly convinced, and that wasn’t questioned today, that we need a European solution and that this solution needs time,” she stressed after her party leaders met in Berlin.

The AfD broke into three state legislatures with double-digit vote shares after campaigning against Ms Merkel’s welcome last year for refugees fleeing Syria and other war zones.

The CDU lost two states that it had hoped to win back from social-democratic and Green incumbents.

They included Baden-Wurttemberg, where the CDU finished second behind the Greens, and the Rhineland Palatinate where the Social Democratic Party (SPD) led the field.

The greatest victory for the AfD was in Saxony Anhalt, where the SPD collapsed to 6 per cent and the once-influential Left party, which polled 23.9 per cent in the 2013 general election, slipped to 16.3 per cent on Sunday.

The AfD took 21 per cent of the vote, leaving the CDU as the leading force in the state.

State governor Reiner Haseloff suggested that the AfD surge was largely attributable to New Year’s Eve assaults in Cologne that were blamed largely on foreigners.

Left leader Birke Bull called the result “bitter,” saying: “We have not managed to persuade the electorate.”