The deadly atrocities in Paris claimed by Islamic State have encouraged right-wing populists and sympathetic politicians to link the attacks to the huge migration crisis which has brought more than one million refugees to Europe this year.
Demands for border closures and an end to the Schengen free movement system are raised alongside calls for heightened security controls and a refusal to co-operate with agreed EU refugee settlement plans.
Such calls should be strongly resisted by Europe’s political leaders as a false diversion from the task of tackling the refugee crisis fairly and humanely. Instead they should redouble their efforts to find a political solution for the Syrian conflict driving the exodus.
Leaders are having to transform their relations with origin and transit states as they tackle the refugee crisis. Their meeting with African leaders in Malta last week created a new trust fund to help regulate the flow. It is capped by a renewed effort to reach agreement with Turkey, from where more than 500,000 Syrian refugees have travelled through Greece to northern Europe.
A €3 billion package will help fund facilities for the two million Syrian refugees still there, along with easing visas and reopening accession negotiations for that state.
These initiatives are reactive and interim but they do focus policy on key issues requiring attention if the migration crisis is to be managed effectively. The African fund is intended to address the root causes of migration, how it can be facilitated and regulated legally.
Traffickers and smugglers are particularly targeted. It opens up development programmes aimed at avoiding people having to leave. European and African critics say with good reason the proposed fund is much too small for these ambitious tasks.
The Turkish initiative is being driven by German chancellor Angela Merkel. She knows the huge flow of refugees to her country comes mostly from Syrians based there.
Dr Merkel must overcome great unease in her Christian Democrat party and in Germany and elsewhere about dealing with an increasingly authoritarian Turkish government, especially on reopening its EU accession talks and extending visas to its citizens in the Schengen free movement system. But needs must.
Diplomatic efforts to resolve the Syrian war politically have made progress in Vienna and at the G20 summit in Turkey. That objective should be reinforced rather than made more difficult by rash military action.
Only by bringing together policies on settling migrants fairly throughout the EU, regulating their flow by registration and return procedures and re-establishing effective border and intelligence controls together can this crisis be overcome internally. Externally, that objective requires a far more coherent relationship with EU neighbouring states and regions.