Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere | Adam Berry/Getty Images Germany and Austria call for extension of border controls Schengen debate comes as EU ministers hold talks on migration.

LUXEMBOURG — Germany and Austria rallied broad support Thursday for their call to extend internal border controls to deal with Europe's migration crisis.

Diplomats and officials from several countries, including France, the Netherlands and Latvia said they supported the call, one of several migration-related issues being discussed during a meeting of EU interior ministers.

Germany and Austria, members of the passport-free Schengen area, reimposed the checks on a temporary basis last September, and prolonged them again in May, in response to the movement of migrants across Europe. The temporary controls are set to expire in mid-November.

Thomas de Maizière, the German interior minister, told reporters before the start of the meeting that Berlin favored extending the controls "on a European basis," adding, “we want to return to borders without controls within the Schengen area but that assumes that we have an effective control of our exterior borders."

Austria's interior minister, Wolfgang Sobotka, also said before the meeting that his country would push to extend the measures. “I think you've got to take a look at the reality,” Sobotka told reporters. “In Greece there are 50,000 refugees not yet or partly registered and there are many in the Balkan countries, so I can hardly imagine that the system will be functioning on November 15. I think it will probably be necessary to have an extension or we have to think of other steps."

But a senior Greek official said other EU members were using the situation in his country as “an excuse” to continue the controls, since Greece had not yet received the support it needs from other member states to cope with the situation.

Three other Schengen countries — Sweden, Denmark and Norway — also reintroduced the controls during the migration crisis. Under the agreement internal border checks are allowed only in exceptional circumstances, and can remain in effect for a maximum of two years. Denmark had already asked for a prolongation of the measures.

Sweden has not made a formal decision yet on whether to ask for a continuation of the measures but its interior minister, Anders Ygeman, said “the formal grounds to have these border controls are still in place.”

Norway, which is part of Schengen but not an EU members, has not made a decision yet on whether to extend the controls.

Much of the debate over when to end the internal border controls has been linked to the migratory pressure on the countries affected. But increasingly some diplomats are making a link with countries' approval of new reforms to the Dublin regulation, the keystone of EU asylum policy that forces refugees to be registered in the first country of arrival. “Even if there is no direct 100 percent link, in terms of practical conditions that must be there,” Ygeman said.

Ministers have been considering a Commission proposal, put forward last May, to reform the Dublin system but national positions are still very far apart on the issue.

Diplomats said the current Slovakian EU Council presidency has not pushed on the new regulation, because of a lack of consensus on it. But Malta, which will hold the Council presidency in the first half of 2017, wants to put Dublin on top of its list of migration priorities. “We will prioritize those proposals made by the European Commission with a view to reform the Common European Asylum System, including the revision of the Dublin Regulation,” Maltese Home Affairs minister Carmelo Abela told POLITICO.

But even if Malta pushes on Dublin, diplomats said the proposal is unlikely to move forward in its current form and that it could still take more than a year to reach a deal.

Some countries, however, remain optimistic. “The moment there is a majority around a particular mechanism I am convinced that any presidency no matter how big or small, or how keen or less keen they are on the migration file, I am sure they will put it in the agenda and will have a positive result,” said Romanian Interior Minister Dragos Ioan Tudorache.