The number of people – yes, they are people – getting into rickety boats and making their way to Europe is staggering. And only God knows how many people were killed on their way here, either because their boats couldn’t take the burden, bad weather or being forced overboard by the human traffickers. And for this luxury, immigrants pay in excess of €1,000.

In this video, Professor Hans Rosling explains that the reason why people don’t jump on a plane in air-conditioned comfort, paying one third of the price and landing safely after a five or six hour trip (rather than five or six days or weeks) is because of EU Directive 2001/51/EC.

In a nutshell, this directive, an extension of Schengen, lays out the fines carriers have to pay if they transport someone to an EU member state. And that amounts to around €3,000 per person carried.

What this directive does, in effect, is force people in war-torn zones to take an extremely dangerous trip across deserts, get ripped off by traffickers, sometimes held hostage and then dumped on an unseaworthy vessel to carry out the last leg of their journey towards Italy, sometimes Malta. If they are lucky enough to get there alive, they spend many weeks and months in limbo in hosting centres, a nice name for an unwelcoming facility.

Unscrupulous people have seen the gap in the market and are now making millions, and at the same time, the EU is spending millions to save these people and then give them shelter. It doesn’t make sense.

So why don’t we just get rid of EU Directive 2001/51/EC and allow airlines and other carriers to transport people without visas or the required documents to EU member states? On arrival, they would make themselves known to the authorities (they have to as these flights would ensure blanket checks on all passengers) and can then be taken to whatever facility the different countries offer. It probably won’t be paradise, but it’s definitely better than a watery grave.

There can even be quotas imposed on airlines, so the number of people will be divided equally across all countries in the EU. All this would result in:

• Far fewer deaths in the Med
• Cutting off the supply of victims to human traffickers
• Spreading the refugees all across the EU, not limit them to Italy, Greece and Malta (ironically, this is now being done, but by the EU)
• Leaving the refugees with money in their pockets and clothes in their bags – that means they can retain their dignity and you won’t have to pay for their clothes and food yourselves

All the money saved by the EU can then be used towards helping these people in whatever way necessary without adding further tax burdens on EU citizens. You may argue that this will result in many more migrants (people) coming. True, but rough estimates at the moment already talk about floods, so no big difference there.

I appreciate that it’s not so simple, but if leaders really want to stop the deaths, they should seriously consider repealing the directive. I doubt this will ever happen, but it’s worth a try.