After holding talks with President Duda, President Mattarella urged the European Union to seek ways to overcome what he referred to as "prehistoric" norms on migration. He said the bloc needed to introduce a new asylum policy to confront the emergency situation that is unfolding in Italy as well as in other parts of Europe.

Mattarella said that Poland was dealing with a similar wave of illegal entries due to a surge of arrivals from neighboring Belarus. He suggested that this has not only caused great concern in the Polish government but has also shifted public opinion increasingly against migrants.

Duda agreed largely with that assessment, saying that "we also have this problem."

We expect greater support, greater understanding from the European Commission, and more decisive action from the EU," the Polish President said, highlighting the fact that Poland was fully in agreement with Italy's objections to the EU's present way of dealing with the uptick in arrivals.

He praised Italy for "making a huge effort on migration."

'Migration is a European problem, requiring a new asylum policy'

In his appeal to the EU, Mattarella took particular aim at the Dublin Regulation, designed to determine which EU member state is responsible for examining an asylum application, and in a positive decision is in charge of taking care of the asylum seeker in question.

Mattarella highlighted the fact that this legislative groundwork was first laid at the end of the 1980s, when the magnitude of current migration issue was unconceivable.

The Italian president had been vocal about the need to reform the treaty in the past, but during his visit to Warsaw decided to speak more candidly than ever before: "What is happening ... with this great influx not only in Italy, requires that the problem be tackled together, as a European Union problem," he said.

"Because the EU can do it with coordinated action. We need a new asylum policy, overcoming old rules that are now prehistoric," Mattarella added.

Praise from the far-right

Mattarella's words were praised by the right-wing ruling coalition in Italy which currently is in the process of approving new proposed restrictions on migration.

When asked to comment Mattarella's words, deputy Premier Matteo Salvini said he hoped that "Brussels, Berlin and Paris will move from words to deeds."

Tommaso Foti, the Lower House whip for Premier Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy party, was more explicit in his choice of words, asking what the main opposition party, the Democratic Left, "will say now that the head of state has rightly highlighted, as part of his role, the serious extent of the problem?".