Jean-Claude Juncker says incidents are unacceptable as he sets out policies aimed at alleviating fragmentation across Europe

The president of the European commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, has condemned attacks on Polish people in the UK in the aftermath of the Brexit vote.

“We Europeans can never accept Polish workers being beaten up, harassed or even murdered in the streets of Essex,” Juncker said in his annual state of the union address to MEPs in Strasbourg. Five Polish people have been attacked in the Essex town of Harlow since the EU referendum, including one man who died from his injuries.

As he set out a series of security and economic measures aimed at uniting Europe following the Brexit vote, Juncker urged EU member states to take greater responsibility for explaining the value of the European project.

Declaring that the next 12 months would be crucial for the EU, Juncker said a united Europe could only be built if it were better explained and better understood. He highlighted the referendum as a warning that the EU faces a battle for survival against nationalism.



“The European Union doesn’t have enough union,” he said. “There are splits out there and often fragmentation exists … That is leaving scope for galloping populism.”



Arkadiusz Jóźwik, 40, died after he was beaten up by teenagers in Harlow last month. Essex police said Jóźwik and a second Polish man, who survived, were apparently the victims of an unprovoked attack. The motive is unknown, but one line of inquiry is the possibility of it being a hate crime.

Three other Poles have been attacked in the town and there have been reports of further incidents across Britain. Following the attack on Jóźwik, the president of Poland, Andrzej Duda, wrote to church leaders in Britain asking them to help prevent attacks on Poles living in the UK and combat a climate of “aversion and animosity”.

Eric Hind, a Harlow-based Pole who organised a protest march in the town after Jóźwik’s killing, welcomed Juncker’s remarks, but said hate crimes had continued since the referendum.

“I am glad people don’t accept this and have reaffirmed that hate crime has no place in UK society, but it is still happening,” he said.

“We respect Britain’s decision to leave the EU, but we would like to see respect for people that have moved here, that have built their lives here, that contribute.

“Many feel let down by the British government. We made the UK our home, but we don’t feel welcome here anymore. People are scared and worried.”

Juncker’s speech in Strasbourg did not dwell on the Brexit vote, though he repeated that Britain could not have “à la carte access” to the single market.

The European commission president has previously criticised the former prime minister David Cameron for failing to prepare the ground for the EU referendum and launching the four-month campaign for Britain to remain after years of sniping directed at Brussels.

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Juncker said he would ask his team of 27 EU commissioners to increase the number of visits made to national parliaments to discuss EU policies. “[Europe] can only be built with the member states, not against the member states,” he said. “We do listen to our citizens and we would like to do that more intensely.”

The 55-minute speech amounted to a laundry list of subjects, ranging from Europe’s contribution to 70 years’ of peace to roaming charges and the price of milk. “I will not accept that milk is cheaper than water,” he said, in a nod to Europe’s farmers. Just as telling were the subjects that went unmentioned, from the EU’s controversial migration pact with Turkey to low-level fighting in eastern Ukraine and tensions with Russia. Juncker, however, called for the EU’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, to have a seat at the table in Syrian peace talks.

In a widely-trailed part of the speech, Juncker called for an EU military headquarters and common EU military hardware to stop wasting money in overlapping projects. Juncker is a well-known supporter of an EU army, but aides insist his vision – set out in a policy paper by Mogherini in late June – stops far short of a common fighting force.

The EU has run 30 military and civilian missions in Africa and the Middle East in the last decade, but Juncker said a permanent EU headquarters was needed to make operations more effective.

The speech comes two days before EU leaders meet in Bratislava, without the UK, to chart a way forward for a post-Brexit EU.

The European commission hopes to smooth the path by increasing the EU infrastructure fund to €500bn (£425bn) by 2020. Juncker promised a €44bn investment fund for Africa in an attempt to create jobs and deter people from undertaking the perilous sea crossing to Europe.

Also on the cards are plans to create a European travel information system, which could mean that British travellers would have to pay about £10 to visit the continent after Brexit. Juncker promised to publish a draft law in November.

In a move aimed at alleviating the migration crisis and Europe’s chronic youth unemployment, Juncker vowed to create a 100,000-strong youth volunteer corps by 2020.

The other strand of the EU migration strategy that Juncker chose to highlight was a plea for the speedy implementation of a law to create an EU border and coastguard, to ensure better control of migrants and refugees arriving from the Middle East and Africa.



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In a tacit acknowledgement that European commission plans for refugee quotas were in trouble, he said solidarity could not be forced, but “must come from the heart”. Hungary, Poland and other central and eastern European countries have accused the commission of blackmail over proposals that would oblige them to pay for not giving refuge to people fleeing war.

Juncker’s speech received a short standing ovation from two-thirds of the MEPs present in Strasbourg. Nigel Farage and the other Ukip MEPs, as well as Marine Le Pen and her rightwing group, remained in their seats. In his response, Farage chose to avoid a direct attack on Juncker, but saved his ire for the MEP and former Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt, who has been chosen to lead Brexit negotiations for the European parliament. Farage described Verhofstadt as a “fanatic” and said his appointment marked “a declaration of war on any sensible negotiation process”.



Farage objects to Verhofstadt’s statement that the UK must accept free movement of people if it wants access to the single market, a view echoed by the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the European council president, Donald Tusk. Farage said this approach would inevitably mean no deal and leave the UK trading under World Trade Organisation rules. The former Ukip leader claimed this “actually isn’t too bad” for the UK, but argued that it would be very bad news for German carmakers and French winemakers.

Le Pen shares the view that the Brexit vote has not been “an apocalypse”. “Brexit has broken a taboo,” she said. “The Brits have shown us that you can leave the EU and come out better.”