Meeting in Berlin: Merkel and Morawiecki warn Putin and Lukashenko

The pressure of the migrants, which the Belarusian ruler Alexandr Lukashenko directs to the border with Poland, currently also dominates the German-Polish relationship and pushes differences on other issues into the background.

Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) said after a conversation with the Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki that there was still a "very tense situation" at the border.

Gerhard Gnauck

Political correspondent for Poland, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania based in Warsaw.

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Johannes Leithäuser

Political correspondent in Berlin.

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She and Morawiecki are of the common conviction that the Belarusian rulers have lured migrants there and thus intend to weaken Poland and the EU.

She defended the two phone calls with Lukashenko that she had made last week and that had been criticized in Poland.

They had served the purpose of stopping the attempt to put the EU under pressure and were therefore in line with Poland's intentions.

Morawiecki said Poland was defending the EU's external border, including Germany, in an effort to prevent migrants from crossing the border.

Lukashenko abuses migrants as living shields.

Although the flow of migrants from Iraq has now been stopped, there are fears that "migrants from Afghanistan" could now be invited to come to Minsk.

Morawiecki also meets Scholz

Morawiecki also addressed the Russian pressure on Ukraine and, alluding to the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which is supposed to enable direct gas deliveries from Russia to Germany without transit through Ukraine, the "energy loop around Ukraine" is tightening more and more. On the escalation ladder, which was created by the actions of Moscow and Minsk, “further steps must be planned in advance” so that EU sanctions are on hand if the situation escalates further.

Morawiecki indirectly warned that the German government and the EU continued to voice their doubts about the rule of law in Polish judicial reforms.

He said, "we should limit ourselves to the big risks and not look for substitute topics".

After talking to Merkel in Berlin, the Polish Prime Minister also had a meeting with her designated successor Olaf Scholz (SPD).

The Chancellor conceded that Nord Stream 2 was “a matter of great controversy” for Poland and Germany.

She affirmed that Ukraine's energy security was an important concern for Germany as well.

She also threatened that further EU sanctions would be “on the agenda” if Belarus did not move forward with the repatriation of the migrants it had brought to the border.

This also applies to Russian destabilizations in Ukraine. Merkel said that Moscow must know "that any further aggressiveness against the sovereignty of Ukraine would come at a high price." She said it was regrettable that at the end of her term of office it had not been possible to organize a meeting in the so-called Normandy format with France, Russia and Ukraine to stabilize the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

For Warsaw, the trip to Berlin is part of a “diplomatic offensive” with which the partners want to be informed of a growing danger to Europe from Russia and Belarus that has been “unprecedented” since 1989. In this context, Morawiecki also called a "manipulation of natural gas prices" in Europe and pressure on the Republic of Moldova, which the Russian gas company Gazprom had threatened to suspend gas supplies at times this week. For these reasons, Morawiecki has met seven heads of state or government in East Central Europe since Sunday. He visited President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Wednesday, and London is on the program this Friday.

Morawiecki sent a letter to the members of the European Parliament in which he formulated a seven-point program to ward off the "blackmailing of the EU from the energy sector" and other dangers.

At the same time, Washington is looking for close contact with Warsaw in the crisis surrounding Belarus: At the end of last week, US intelligence coordinator Avril Haines visited Poland and spoke to Morawiecki with several government politicians.

According to Warsaw, it was about "strengthening security on NATO's eastern flank".

A telephone conversation followed on Wednesday between the national security advisors of both countries, Jake Sullivan and Paweł Soloch, during which, according to the American account, “further close consultations” were agreed.

On Thursday afternoon, the Polish President Andrzej Duda traveled to NATO in Brussels.