PM appeals for support over state of emergency in border regions

Poland's prime minister appealed on Monday for cross-party support for a state of emergency on the country's border with Belarus.

The call by Mateusz Morawiecki comes just hours before parliament is due to debate the state of emergency, which has made strips of land adjacent to the border off-limits to non-residents.

Declared on Thursday by President Andrzej Duda, the state of emergency is designed to stem an increasing flow of migrants coming across the border.

Poland and the three Baltic States have accused the government of Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian president, of bringing migrants from the Middle East and then pushing them across the EU border in retaliation for sanctions that Brussels has imposed on Minsk.

"We introduced a state of emergency, we applied to the president (for it)," Morawiecki told a press conference. "The president signed the applicable regulation. Today in the Sejm (lower house of parliament - PAP) we will appeal to all political powers to support that state of emergency."

The Sejm is scheduled to discuss the president's regulation at 16.30.

Many of Poland’s main opposition parties have criticised the state of emergency, arguing that it is an over-reaction that curbs civil liberties.