Prime Minister Juha Sipilä‏ on Sunday congratulated German Chancellor Angela Merkel for her victory in the parliamentary elections held.

“Congratulations to my good European colleague Angela MerkeI for the victory,” Sipilä‏ wrote in his twitter late Sunday night immediately after the preliminary results of the elections.

“Our good cooperation will continue!” said the Finnish prime minister in his brief reaction to the poll result.

The incumbent German Chancellor Merkel has been re-elected for the fourth term in the Sunday’s elections.

The conservative union led by Merkel defended its commanding role in the Bundestag (German parliament) with 32.5 per cent votes, falling short of the expectations with a 9-percentage-point gap with the election results of four years ago, reported the news agency Xinhua.

The union’s main rival, centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) led by former European Parliament president Martin Schulz, also suffered a big setback in Sunday’s election.

Meanwhile, the far-right party Alternative fuer Deutschland (AfD) unexpectedly made a historic breakthrough with 13.5 percent of votes, and became the third strongest party in the Bundestag.

Merkel, addressing the supporters, however, said she had hoped for a “better result”, reported BBC.

She also said her government would have to deal with economic and security issues as well as addressing the root causes of migration – one of the main reasons behind the AfD’s result, said the BBC report.