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German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday insisted on her refusal to close the country’s border to asylum applicants despite unprecedented gains by an anti-immigrant party in state elections over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Merkel said she would instead continue to pursue a “European solution” to the migrant crisis involving negotiations for a deal between the European Union and Turkey to stem the flow of people crossing the Aegean Sea to Greece.

“I am firmly convinced—and this was not put in question today—that we need a European solution, and that this solution needs time,” Ms. Merkel said, as quoted by the source.

According to the report, Merkel’s comments came after the Christian Democrats suffered resounding losses in three states as some of their voters defected to the upstart Alternative for Germany party, or AFD, which made opposition to the chancellor’s open-door policy for refugees the centerpiece of its campaign.

Ms. Merkel described the elections as a “difficult day” for her party and said the rise of the populist AFD made clear her government needed to work harder to show it was effectively tackling the migrant crisis.

“The fact that in the eyes of the people this issue does not have a conclusive and satisfactory solution very strongly decided the elections,” Angela Merkel said.