While many Europeans view immigration as a burden, legendary humanitarian worker Rupert Neudeck sees a mutually beneficial opportunity.
The white-bearded German knows his country is facing a demographic deficit, with its economy forecast to lose up to six million workers in the next 15 years due to an ageing population.
He is positing a radical solution: vocational training centres for African migrants and refugees coupled with a “partnership” between the EU and African Union, or individual member states.
The phenomenon will become bigger, not smaller. We cannot go on like this with only the policy of Fortress Europe
“The economy is in favour of ‘pulling’ people to Germany and other EU countries and training them to fill spaces in the labour market,” he said.
Mr Neudeck envisages programmes set up with African countries where some of those who come to Europe would remain and some would return after an agreed time limit with skills and wealth that would benefit their homelands.
He was in Malta to learn more about how the country was managing migration and refugee flows from North Africa.
“In Malta, it seems many (migrants and refugees) have nothing to do, but they are eager to work.
“The EU should establish vocational training centres everywhere, both in Europe and in African countries. When the situation changes in their countries, many will go back with a trade.”
He strongly feels that European countries should establish a quota for sharing refugees already in the EU: so-called “burden sharing”.
After devoting much of his life to humanitarian work and helping refugees, the 74-year-old certainly has the experience to back up his bold ideas.
His empathy with the young men and women forced or pushed to leave their homelands in search of a better life comes from his own experience.
Mr Neudeck was a refugee from childhood, after being forced out of Danzig (now known as Gdansk) in 1945 when the Soviets advanced into Poland.
In 1979, together with his wife and close friends, he started the campaign A Ship for Vietnam.
Their goal was to save some of thousands of southeast Asian refugees forced to flee by boat after the fall of Saigon, when the Vietnamese socialist government took revenge on its opponents.
The group charted a freighter, Cap Anamur, and it is estimated that they rescued about 10,375 people at sea between 1979 and 1987.
At the time, the South China Sea was different to the Mediterranean today, Mr Neudeck said.
All Vietnamese rescued then were bona fide refugees and western countries willingly established quotas to take them until the situation improved.
He noted that the there was no end in sight for the phenomenon taking place in the Mediterranean, so a long-term political solution was needed.
While Somalis and Eritreans commonly qualified for international protection when they arrived in Europe, citizens of many other poor African nations did not, but this did not deter them from coming.
“The phenomenon will become bigger, not smaller.
“We cannot go on like this with only the policy of ‘Fortress Europe’,” Mr Neudeck said.
Through his Green Helmets Relief Organisation, the genial German is establishing a vocational training centre in Mauritania, near a once popular departure point for migrants seeking to reach the Canary Islands.
This will cater for up to 70,000 students and may ultimately be used by EU member states or other African countries seeking skilled workers.
He knows that many failed asylum seekers from African states are ashamed or afraid to return home because their family or clan would have paid for them to go and earn money for them.
“These people are often the best of the best. They have much to offer,” he said.