Alice Weidel

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Monday urged parties to avoid collaborating with the far right, after the AfD made record gains in two regional polls and his own coalition suffered a heavy defeat a year before a general election.

Addressing the Bundestag, Merkel said that vaccination is progressing better and better, that the number of infections is declining.

"Some time in June this year, I gave an exhaustive video interview to journalist Nenad Radicevic. From that interview, he included merely one half of one sentence in the text, and with his very one-sided writing he misled the readers to believe that I was somehow affiliated with the neo-Nazis from Germany and neo-Ustasha from Croatia.

Last year, Germany spent a record € 23 billion on refugee integration and prevention of migration to its territory, the BNR reported relying on Reuters and an official report by the Berlin Ministry of Finance.

We see 11% increase compared to 2017. The document will be discussed at today's meeting of the German government.

Right-wing Serbian nationalists have lined up to congratulate the far-right AfD in Germany, which secured 13 per cent of the vote in Sunday's general election and entered the Bundestag for the first time.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel was re-elected for a fourth time - but her Christian Democrats, the CDU, scored their worst result since 1949.