The primary goal of the paper is to propose a methodology to govern migration flows in an economically efficient and humane way. The proposal will introduce an alternative interpretation of economic migration flows that will allow for the classification of countries in potential departure and arrival countries, and more importantly to explain arrivals. The model will then be used – in substitution of the mechanical and unrealistic hypothesis that are presently adopted – to obtain a new procedure to jointly build labour market and demographic scenarios. The procedure will allow for the estimation of future labour needs and migration flows that will affect the European Union and countries characterized by the most significant declines in working-age population (WAP), as well as analyse the socioeconomic impacts of these migration flows. The same procedure will be done for Egypt, as a counter example of a country likely to send migrants. After discussing the extent to which migrations are the only possible solution to the structural lack of labour supply, the paper will present a detailed proposal on how to address, in a cooperative way, the mass migration that will take place from Africa to the European Union, both across the Mediterranean and increasingly through the Balkan countries.