Svein Arne Hansen, President of European Athletics, told insidethegames that they are going to hold discussions with organisers of the Championships in Belarus to try and have more events there.

At last year’s inaugural European Games in Baku, the athletics competition comprised the European Athletics Team Championships Third League competition which involved the host nation Azerbaijan.

"We are working on a format," Hansen said.

"We will meet with the European Games officials and see if we can have athletics in Minsk in 2019."

Hansen confirmed that any event involving athletics at Minsk 2019 would be a new model, adding: "All I can say now is that the format of Baku is NOT in the cards."

The European Athletic position will be welcomed by Maksim Ryzhenkov, first vice-president of the National Olympic Committee of the Republic of Belarus, who announced earlier this week that he was hopeful of finding a way for athletics to be part of the second European Games.

"We would like this sport to be represented on a wider scale at the Games and are currently thinking over its format," Ryzhenkov told BelTA.

It was revealed in October that Belarus plans to spend only $40 million ($32 million/€38 million) on organising Minsk 2019 and that it could feature as few as 12 sports.

Azerbaijan invested at least $1.2 billion (£948 million/€1.1 billion) in staging the 2015 event, although the figure was widely thought to be much higher.

Ryzhenkov added that preference would be given to sports offering qualification for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo when it came to inclusion on the Minsk 2019 programme.

The most likely make-up of the programme looks at the moment like acrobatics, boxing, canoeing, road and track cycling, artistic and rhythmic gymnastics, judo, rowing, sambo, table tennis, trampoline tumbling, table tennis and freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling.

Of those sports, only two - acrobatics and sambo - would not be able to offer qualification as neither are Olympic disciplines.