GERMAN Prime Minister Angela Merkel is putting a brave face on this week’s abject failure by the EU to face up to the refugee crisis.

She recognises that the measures agreed in Brussels do not provide a long-term solution and criticises other EU member state governments for their unwillingness to be bolder.

Certainly, the callousness shown by the Hungarian, Slovakian and other right-wing regimes has been sickening.

Yet it is only a rougher and arguably more honest display of the ruthless self-interest shown by Ms Merkel and her French counterparts when making the peoples of Greece, Cyprus and Ireland pay for the bailout of reckless German and French banks.

In taking one-third of the EU quota of refugees to be moved on from Greece and Italy, on top of hundreds of thousands already accommodated in Germany, it would be nice to think that Ms Merkel’s motives are entirely humanitarian.

German willingness to welcome refugees in such numbers may indeed have nothing to do with that country’s severe labour shortage, which leaves its economy needing up to 400,000 new immigrant workers every year.

But Ms Merkel is nothing if not a sharp-elbowed and efficient envoy for German big business.

That said, her government’s contribution to alleviating the plight of millions of desperate people stands in stark contrast to the gutless, mean-minded performance of our own Prime Minister.

In Brussels, David Cameron refused to participate in the EU quota scheme, which in itself would be entirely justifiable were we already offering generous refuge to the victims of the economic and military warfare waged against their homelands by Britain and the West.

But whereas Germany will have opened its doors to a million asylum-seekers by the end of this year, Britain will have allowed in a few thousand.

Tory government boasting about its aid for refugee camps in Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan is a miserable cover for keeping homeless, frightened and bereaved people as far away as possible from Britain’s shores.

Although the barbed wire barricades of “Fortress Europe” are going up with the blessing of the Brussels summit, they will not stop the flow of refugees.

Only a global effort, co-ordinated by the UN and its agencies, will bring immediate relief on anywhere near a sufficient scale. Yet even that will prove inadequate if the underlying political and economic crises in parts of the Middle East and Africa are not addressed.

First, Western powers must cease supporting the anti-Assad insurrection in Syria and provide the Damascus regime with military and logistical assistance in its fight against Isis. Nato member Turkey should call off its war on the Kurdistan Workers’ Party and associated militias, and start supporting those forces that are resisting the advance of the Isis monsters.

Second, a Syrian peace process must be convened which seeks to unite all non-Islamist, anti-Isis forces on the basis that President Bashar al-Assad will remain in post until victory is won and free elections can be held under strict UN supervision.

Third, the West should put pressure on its Saudi Arabian and Gulf state allies to halt their murderous bombardment of Yemen, which only adds to the refugee crisis, so that a process of peace and reconstruction can begin there.
Finally, the UN and African Union should be supported in renewed efforts to resolve fundamental political and economic problems in Libya, Sudan and Eritrea.

Anything less is a tourniquet, not a remedy.