The question is not how many refugees we take, but what action is taken

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/04/question-refugees-economic-migrants-europe

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It is very easy for the response to the refugee crisis on Europe’s borders to become wholly emotional. The human misery revealed in many of the individual stories – and the tragic death toll on many journeys – quite rightly evoke pity from the vast majority. Simultaneously, the sheer scale of the numbers involved creates tension and worry across European countries, leading to an equally emotional response that says this must be stopped at all costs. The task for governments across Europe is to take a practical approach that can meet our humanitarian obligations in both the short and long term.

Related: We need to welcome many more refugees than Cameron suggests | Caroline Lucas

Too much of the debate has been framed as a question of how many refugees each EU state should take. This is the issue that should come at the end of the formation of a new policy. It is indeed an urgent question, which is why the meeting of European ministers on 14 September needs to agree a new policy, but there are technical questions of how such a distribution would be equitably achieved. Should it be purely per head of population or should the level of economic development be taken into account? What difference should it make if a country is not inside the Schengen free-movement area (such as the UK)? Are there any obligations on countries that are inside Schengen but not the EU?

Before we answer these questions, we need to establish the principles on which we are operating. The first must be that this crisis can only be solved at a European level. There is some irony in Nigel Farage’s insistence that immigration is the main issue for the forthcoming EU referendum, just at a time when the problems at Calais are so high profile.

One certain effect of British exit would be to give the French the chance to say they no longer want Britain’s border controls to be on their territory, but that they should be returned to Dover. So we would have less effective controls outside the EU. But looking more widely, this is a problem that crosses continents, and only a continent-wide response will be adequate.

The second principle is that we need to distinguish between genuine refugees and others. The fact that there are so many genuine refugees in this current crisis does not change this principle. A significant share of the asylum applications in the EU are not from countries currently torn apart by conflict. Nearly 40% of applications filed in Germany last month came from people arriving from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro. There are no doubt good reasons why some people from these countries would prefer to live in Germany, but that does not make them refugees. It is also a sad fact that since Germany announced that it would accept any Syrians as refugees, the production of fake Syrian passports has soared.

People genuinely fleeing war zones should be helped as near as possible to their homes

The third principle is that people genuinely fleeing war zones should be helped as near as possible to their homes. One of the sensible ideas that has emerged from several European governments, including our own, has been the setting up of reception centres in countries neighbouring the conflict zones. This would have the immediate effect of saving lives at sea. Many more people would be allowed to feel safe without risking the journey across the Mediterranean. This would also help break part of the economic model on which the people traffickers base their horrible activities.

Clearly the European powers would not just need to fund these centres, but would also have to give greater help to the countries in which they were based. It is unfair to expect countries such as Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, which are already struggling with the sheer numbers involved, to bear the full economic burden as well.

Once these centres were established, it would be easier to spot those who were simply using the refugee crisis to get into the EU without being refugees themselves, but even more importantly it would give greater confidence to the public in European countries that practical action had been taken by their governments.

The generosity of spirit that is usually shown by advanced democracies disappears when the public feel two things: that their government is not in control of the situation, and that their daily lives are being severely disrupted by the consequences of this lack of control. If we want to see the return of altruism, which could entail a more balanced distribution of the refugees already in Europe, we need to take action that demonstrates practical results, and quickly. The prime minister’s announcement today is just one example of how to take that practical action.