Intending to address the "refugee challenge," the Western Balkans Summit, held on Thursday in Vienna, has been overshadowed by the tragic death of 71 illegal refugees in a truck at the side of a highway in Austria on the same day. In the past two years, Europe has faced a dramatically rising number of migrant arrivals, the gravest migrant crisis since the end of WWII.

Since April, when five boats carrying more than 2,000 migrants sank in the Mediterranean Sea with an estimated death toll reaching 1,200, Europe's migrant crisis has been put into the international spotlight. Millions of despairing refugees from the war-torn Middle East and poverty-stricken and chaotic North Africa are risking everything to steal their way into the "paradise" of Europe. According to the International Organization for Migration, up to 3,072 people died or disappeared on their way across the Mediterranean in 2014.

As they tried to flee from their hellish home countries, the paradise is reluctant to embrace them. Barbed wire has been re-installed along the border lines at the cost of the outlook of "Europe without borders." Given the dim prospect for the European economy, new migrant arrivals have impacted Europe's employment market.

Europe is enmeshed in a conundrum of its own creation. Its prosperity is based on hundreds of years of colonialism and exploitation of Africa and other parts of the world. It waged wars and plundered resources, with the destruction of the Africans' cities, livelihoods and hopes for life, which resulted in ingrained underdevelopment. Now, the EU keeps intervening in these countries in other ways, such as instigating "revolutions" in Libya and Syria in the name of human rights, which, in the end, have caused more humanitarian crises.

This crisis is related to almost every major problem of the integrated society - economic recession, identity crisis and failure to launch political reforms. Europe is breeding xenophobia and "angry politics" against immigrants, a selfish response to its debts and duties. Used to being an open civilization, Europe has become more narrow-minded along with its decline. It ignores the fact that as low birth rates, an aging population and high welfare problems keep haunting society, it, to some extent, needs migrants to reinvigorate it.

Europe needs a proactive approach to meet the challenges, or the migrant crisis might spread to be a disaster. As long as these migrants are still in mortal danger due to poverty and war in their home countries, Europe will not regain peace. To bring tranquility and development to these countries, be it from a historical and realistic perspective, is an obligation Europe cannot shrug off.