Next week, the European Union's leaders have a golden opportunity to make good on years of failed promises and half-baked measures that have so far typified the bloc's attitude towards the migration crisis that its southern states, Malta included, have endured for years.

They also have a golden opportunity to find ways to help the huddled masses on Europe's doorstep who seek the safety that we in this part of the world, by and large, take utterly for granted.

Last April, the EU's leaders convened in shock and horror in the wake of a particularly horrific incident at sea that led to the death of some 500 migrants off the Libyan coast.

But at that meeting the EU's leaders not only failed the thousands of would-be migrants hoping against hope to seek refuge somewhere in Europe from the horrors of their own countries. They also failed their own citizens and the European ideal of humanitarianism in the process. 

By and large, we Europeans are humanitarians, but our leaders' response to the migration crisis has been anything but.

Instead of seeking new legal channels for the people seeking our protection, the EU's leaders in April instead chose to target the human traffickers in Libya. And in so doing they simply sought to further reinforce the concept of Fortress Europe.

There have to be real alternatives for such people - who are left with no option other than to risk their lives by crossing the Mediterranean in traffickers' ramshackle, overcrowded boats - to seek asylum in Europe.

Instead, the European Council's shallow and shameful response to the migrant crisis was predominantly aimed at preventing migrants and refugees from reaching Europe and creating restrictive border control policies in countries of transit and origin. There was hardly any talk of strengthening legal, and safe, channels for migration.

Focusing on keeping people out of Europe by cutting their only existing routes is only going to push people fleeing for their lives to find other potentially even more dangerous routes to safety.

EU leaders missed a golden opportunity last April to make a real difference in the lives of the people who were suffering. They provided little but a kneejerk reaction to the images on their television screens and decided to go after the smugglers instead of determining ways to protect those seeking their protection.

Arguably, the one good thing to have come out of that 23 April summit was the decision to hold the Valletta summit on migration, convening all EU and African leaders to thrash out the issues at stake once and for all.

Next week's summit holds great promise - bringing together dozens of African and European countries, a host of international stakeholder organisations and a number of United Nations agencies. 

The summit's draft conclusions as published, however, leave a lot to be desired.

Complicating matters further is the fact that since the calling of the Valletta summit last April, matters have changed considerably and the human suffering of refugees seeking the safety of Europe has increased exponentially. 

Since then, a whole new migration front has opened up to the east as thousands of refugees flee the war in Syria and the atrocities being committed in the region by Islamic State.

As such, the EU will need at least a two-pronged approach to the humanitarian crisis. And while we would like to look at next week's summit as a potential seminal moment for the EU, we have our doubts given past experience.

Since April, EU leaders have met four times in Brussels. A special summit on migration was held on 23 April, followed by a regular summit with migration as its main item in June. An informal summit on the refugee crisis was then held on 23 September, followed by a regular summit with migration as the main item on 15 October. Finally, a mini-summit on the Western Balkans route, gathering 12 countries, was held on 25 October.

Next week's summit will be number five and real solutions are expected once and for all. For starters, the Valletta conference is expected to buy the cooperation of the African leaders in exchange for promises for legal migration channels, and readmissions of migrants who do not qualify as asylum-seekers.

The Valletta summit is also expected to see the launch of the Africa Trust Fund of €1.8 billion, aimed at dealing with the root causes of the refugee crisis.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has appealed to member states to find innovative ways of financing the migrant crisis, as the EU coffers are running dry. He insisted that EU states had not met to deliver on the commitments they made at the 21 September summit, and that they still needed to deliver €2.3 billion.

"I don't want to arrive in Valletta with promises not kept," Juncker said. "How can we engage in a serious and responsible dialogue with our African cousins if we are unable to keep the promises we made to them? We need to arrive in Valletta with pockets full not only with promises, but with promises kept."

Next week the EU faces one of its greatest litmus tests and where better to hold that test than in one of the countries that has been in the middle of it all since the beginning? 

The entire world, and not just its refugees, will be looking to Europe next week not only for solutions, but for inspiration. Europe must not disappoint again.