The acting German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki underlined the need for further sanctions against the government of Belarus in the light of the ongoing migrant crisis at the Polish-Belarusian border, in a joint press briefing in Berlin on Thursday

"I have expressed to the Polish Prime Minister my full solidarity on behalf of Germany. Our Interior Ministers [Horst] Seehofer and we are of the common understanding that this situation resulted from the fact that Belarus attracted migrants to Belarus in a sense of a hybrid attack looking for destabilisation and weakening not only of Poland but of all the European Union," said Angela Merkel. "Here are also sanctions against Lukashenko on the program, additional sanctions, if there is no visible progress to report, and this development continues this way. We have not reached yet the [de-escalation] that Germany and Poland are longing for," she added.

"There must be additional sanctions to be planned, among them trade sanctions. Poland has a border with Belarus and the trade of goods is taking place all the time, but we keep on recalling that this exchange of goods could be halted if there was an escalation of this conflict," suggested Morawiecki. "We are defending the exterior border of the European Union, and along with them Germany from this great wave of migrants," said the Polish Prime Minister.

Morawiecki could be among the last visitors of the acting Chancellor Merkel. He would, later on, meet Chancellor-designate Olaf Scholz.