No quick fix for EU’s refugee crisis

DEAR SIR — Here is the only way to solve the European crisis, but almost everyone will find fault with it.

Europe, the Near East and North Africa are facing an exceptional event. Understandably, no country was prepared for it, but all have to deal with it one way or another.

Argue as we may whose fault it is, there is and can only be one solution now: to apply existing international and domestic law to the processing of migrants and refugees.

It will be a messy, slow and less than adequate process. It will involve negotiations and questionable tradeoffs, take many months of work to produce less than satisfactory results and involve accepting that practicality and compassion will be at odds throughout. Every interest, using the media, will argue with whatever is done — and not done.

It seems trying to secure agree- ment on quotas and budgets is working against a collective response. As the numbers of immigrants grow, improvisation is therefore unavoidable. Existing administrative capacity can only be used as best as possible and only expanded as quickly as possible where it is inevitably lacking.

If poorer European Union (EU) countries opt out, the richer ones will end up taking more than their fair share of the burden, simply because there is no alternative. Democratic governments must do their best to be honest with people about the inconvenience and sacrifice this involves. They will have to grin and bear it when it makes them extremely unpopular with their electorates.

Nongovernmental organisations and charity will help, but interstate co-operation alone can solve this crisis. Eventually, all the disagreements and recriminations we are witnessing will be replaced by a coalition of the willing. As SA has found with its problems, there is no other way.

Paul Whelan Umhlanga