Suffering of refugees is a problem the European Union has fashioned for itself

"For the past six years, it has tried to shut out migrants from poorer and conflict-ridden countries — through border walls, draconian policing and dubious deals with countries outside the bloc — in fear of the political effects of large-scale migration.

The problems started in earnest in 2015, when the chaotic arrival of more than one million people, the majority fleeing war and persecution in Syria, catapulted the question of migration to the top of the continent’s political agenda. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany’s initial welcome soon gave way to harsh statements and newly fortified borders. Thousands of migrants perished trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea, as search and rescue operations were scaled back. Others were warehoused in grim detention centers along the bloc’s fringes.

Countries took note. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, sensing the chance to establish some leverage over his neighbors, offered to help — at a steep price. In 2016, the European Union struck a deal: Six billion euros, then about $6.6 billion, in return for Turkey stopping the nearly three million Syrian refugees on its soil leaving for Greece.

Even before the crisis, the European Union had a habit of capitulating to the demands of autocrats, offering Libya’s Col. Muammar el-Gaddafi €60 million in 2010 after he threatened an “influx of starving and ignorant Africans.” Today, the bloc funds the Libyan Coast Guard, despite reports that much of the money is funneled to militia and human traffickers.

For irregular migrants, the consequences are hellish. The Libyan Coast Guard returns people to detention centers where systematic rape, torture and murder have been widely documented. Under the deal with Turkey, people who arrive in Greece are meant to be sent back to Turkey, but instead they languish for years in overcrowded camps on Greek islands.

Its moral authority sapped, the European Union has become vulnerable to threats from unscrupulous governments. When the bloc tries to censure Turkey over human rights, the rule of law or political repression, for example, Turkish officials often threaten to scrap the deal. In retaliation for Spain offering medical treatment to a Western Sahara independence leader, Morocco — whose security services the European Union also funds — temporarily halted policing of the border with the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in May.

By design, the European Union is now dependent on the good will of autocratic regimes for the maintenance of its borders. Human misery has become an acceptable bargaining chip: The men, women and children on the Polish border were just the latest to be caught in the middle. Trapped between heavily armed Polish and Belarusian border guards, in freezing conditions and with meager food supplies, they faced a perilous situation. At least 11 people died.

The European Union focused on Mr. Lukashenko, decrying his “inhuman” actions. But those words ring hollow when Poland, a member state, forced people back over the border and fired tear gas and water cannons at them. It also barred journalists, aid workers and international observers from the border zone. And yet, remarkably, Poland came under no pressure from the union to open its border to the most vulnerable. It instead enjoyed the bloc’s full support.

European officials use the language of moral superiority and humanitarianism without the policies to back it up, weakening their authority to call out countries such as Belarus and Russia. They should start redressing those double standards immediately. In the first instance, the European Commission must pressure Poland, Lithuania and Latvia — wielding the threat, or even reality, of punishment — to allow humanitarian access to the border zone where necessary and to process asylum claims of people on their territory.

That should be the first step in a new approach to migration, opening more legal pathways for work visas and refugee resettlement, while developing a functioning asylum system in which the burden is shared throughout the bloc. None of this will be easy — right-wing, anti-migrant sentiment is widely entrenched across the continent — but the benefits would be broad. It would strengthen the bloc’s moral standing, for one, and open up its societies to the gains well-controlled migration can bring.

But, fundamentally, it makes strategic sense. Chaotic scenes at borders are not a good look. By treating asylum seekers on its soil not as a worst-case scenario, but as a manageable situation to be met with compassion and solidarity, Brussels would send a powerful message to the world. Its antagonists would know that there would be no point trying to blackmail it in future.

But if the bloc allows death and suffering to become the default, the line between authoritarian regimes and the European Union will blur even more. For those keen to undermine democracy and human rights, nothing could be better."