The economic pull is exacerbated because, unlike in previous times, the residents of the refugee camps have access to mobile phones and information. They know that Germany has said it expects to accept 800,000 asylum-seekers this year (a figure greater than the population of some EU members). They will have heard about — or seen — the welcome being given to refugees arriving there, the reception committees and the politicians holding placards saying ‘refugees welcome’. All of this will encourage many more to embark on the perilous journey to Europe.

The European Union’s energies would be far better spent improving life in the camps and finding ways to allow people to work there, as Professor Paul Collier suggested in these pages last month. The camps should be properly funded. The UNHCR claims it currently has a $795 million funding gap in its Syrian operation. France has given a fraction of what Britain has to this work, which puts a rather different perspective on François Hollande’s insistence that Britain must take on more of the refugee burden. No country in Europe has given more to the refugee camps than Britain.

Another danger of Merkel’s open-door policy is that it may make Syria’s recovery from civil war harder. By accepting those who have managed to make it to Europe, rather than those still in the camps, Germany is, intentionally or not, cherry-picking the more prosperous members of what used to be Syrian society, those who have sufficient resources to pay the traffickers. Without them, their ravaged country is far less likely to make a recovery once the fighting eventually stops. As the French foreign minister Laurent Fabius warned this week, ‘If all these refugees come to Europe or elsewhere, then Isis has won the game.’