Interview: Long-term measures needed to address refugees crisis: French expert

European leaders should "not only think how to keep refugees away from their borders," but also have to hammer out long-term alternatives to curb the rampant number of refugees and help "lost generations" to better integrate, an expert on migration said on Friday.

Mathieu Tardis, a researcher at French Institute of International Relations (IFRI) called on European officials to consider refugees as a factor of development and not just a burden. Otherwise, they "are going straight into the wall and going to fail."

"Whatever we did, refugees and migrants are presented as a problem. That's a strategic error and irresponsible policy whose results are these thousands of people who died or live in a sluggish conditions," Tardis told Xinhua in an interview.

"What's happening in Europe is a European crisis as the leaders continue to focus on frontiers security rather than the humanitarian side of the crisis," he added.

The French expert called for a win-win relation between refugees and countries that welcome them, inviting officials in the European bloc to "provide asylum seekers with the adequate tools to offer an added value to the societies they live in and better integrate."

In an unprecedented refugees influx, more than 500,000 people, mainly Syrians, crossed the Mediterranean into Europe so far this year with 13 percent of them children.

About 3,000 of them died while trying to escape death in their native countries, according to the International Organization for Migration.

Despite objection of some countries, interior ministers of the European bloc's 28 states, agreed to distribute 120,000 refugees across the bloc.

To the French expert, what's have been pledged was "too late and not enough."

"The accord on refugees' distribution is a positive step but it won't resolve the core of the issue," he told Xinhua.

Tardis argued that the lack of "suitable systems" to receive asylum seekers in Greece and Italy would hamper efforts to address the crisis.

"Internal frontiers still exist in the European bloc with national asylum systems. Europeans must assume their responsibilities in better organizing refugees' arrival in order to avoid deadly trips," he stressed.

Besides, the French expert pointed out the necessity to help financing sustainable development with a major focus on education and health in countries that welcome refugees, such as Lebanon where one third of its population are Syrians.

"Closing borders won't deter refugees to make their trips to Europe and leaders should not focus only on the short term," Tardis said. Enditem