BERLIN (Reuters) – A senior member of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc on Wednesday welcomed the introduction of temporary border controls between Italy and Austria, saying it followed a request from the southern German state of Bavaria.

“I do not think Schengen is over,” Stephan Mayer, a conservative expert on interior affairs, said of the code which removes border controls between most European states.

“But I certainly see the danger that if it is not possible in the long run to apply European asylum rules, that this directly erodes and endangers Schengen,” he told reporters in Berlin.

(Reporting by Andreas Rinke; Writing Madeline Chambers; Editing by Paul Carrel)