Germany to ask European Commission to allow extension of border controls

Germany will ask the European Commission to allow an extension of temporary border controls within the Schengen zone of passport-free travel beyond mid-May, Interior Minister Thomas De Maiziere said on Saturday.

Germany and some other European Union members have introduced temporary border checks to control or halt record flows of migrants fleeing conflicts in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere and traveling to western Europe via the Balkans.

Germany took in more than one million migrants last year. But the number of arrivals has slowed significantly after border clampdowns were imposed by Austria and other countries along the migrants' main Balkans route northwards from Greece.

"Even if the refugee situation has eased at internal borders along the West Balkan route, we look with concern at the developments on the external borders of the Union," De Maiziere said in a...