(VOVworld) – Interior Ministry spokesman Karl-Heinz Grundboeck said on Saturday that Austria was in talks with the European Commission and its partners to extend border controls brought in last year to help stem the migrant flow.

A barbed wire fence is erected at a border crossing between Austria and Slovenia at Spielfeld, Austria in December 2015. (Photo: AFP)

The measures are due to expire on May 12. His remarks came after German media reported that several EU states were pressing Brussels to extend the temporary controls inside the passport-free Schengen zone for at least six months.

The EU allowed bloc members to introduce the restrictions after hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees began trekking up the Balkans from Greece towards western and northern Europe last September. Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany and Sweden have all clamped down on their frontiers as the continent battles its biggest migration crisis since the end of World War II.