Alwaght-An anti-euro and anti-immigration party in Germany has won its first seat in a city-state election in Hamburg, as Press TV reports.
The Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) scored around 5.5 percent of the votes on Sunday.
Last year, the party gained representation in parliament elections in three eastern German states by winning around 10 percent of the votes in Brandenburg, Saxony, and Thuringia.
"Now we have shown that we can also be successful in a liberal, cosmopolitan city like Hamburg," said party leader Bernd Lucke.
Lucke, who has also served as an economics professor at Hamburg University, is an AfD member representing the party in the European parliament.
The controversial politician, an outspoken critic of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s eurozone bailouts, said earlier in January that he is grateful to the leaders of Greece’s leftist Syriza party for their brave resistance against EU policies.
AfD, founded in 2013 after Germany was hit by the eurozone crisis, accuses Merkel of providing too much help for debt-ridden European countries. However, during the past months, the AfD has focused more on anti-immigration and crime issues.
The party has also thrown its weight behind anti-Islamic group PEGIDA which managed to organize some rallies in Germany’s eastern cities last month but gradually waned as people launched massive counter-demonstrations against the extremist group.
The regional elections in Hamburg do not play a major role in the national politics, but the rising influence of parties like AfD could pose a real risk to the ruling government’s EU-friendly policies.
