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EU to extend Schengen border controls for 3 months

"This is why we recommend allowing member states concerned to maintain temporary border controls for a further three months."

Swedish police carry out identity checks on the train from Copenhagen, Denmark, to Malmo, Sweden, on November 12, 2015

Austria, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and non-EU Norway first introduced the checks in 2015 as a record wave of refugees and migrants from Syria, the Middle East and Africa streamed across Europe.

The current measures were imposed in November and are due to lapse in mid-February.

"Significant progress has been made to lift internal border controls, but we need to solidify it further," European Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans said in a statement.

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Brussels had earlier said it wanted to restore full functioning with no border controls across the Schengen area -- which includes 22 EU countries as well as Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Liechtenstein -- by the end of 2016.

The European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, added that "conditions... allowing for a return to a normally functioning Schengen area have not yet been entirely fulfilled."

The EU's 28 member states must formally approve the extension.

Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos insisted that the Schengen area -- one of the EU's proudest achievement and a cornerstone of its principle of freedom of movement -- would get back to normal.

"These controls cannot go on for ever and they will not go on for ever," Avramopoulos told reporters in Brussels, adding that the extension was a "last resort".

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