French President Emmanuel Macron said Belarus's leader Alexander Lukashenko had to step down, in comments to a French weekly published on Sunday.

"It's clear he has to go," he told the Journal du Dimanche, speaking days after the European Union refused to recognise Lukashenko as the country's legitimate president.

"It is a crisis of power, an authoritarian power that cannot accept the logic of democracy and which is hanging on by force. It is clear that Lukashenko has to go," he said.