Despite a record 500,000 people seeking asylum in the EU so far this year, Mr Juncker said migrants who were not refugees should also be welcomed. ‘We are an ageing continent in demographic decline,’ he said. ‘Migration must change from being a problem to being a well-managed resource. Migration has to be legalised. We have to organise legal ways to Europe.

‘The Commission will come forward with a well-designed legal migration package in early 2016.’

EU officials last night refused to comment on how many people could be welcomed under this new scheme, but one said it could involve ‘big numbers’.

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European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, pictured left with European Parliament president Martin Schulz, right, said he wants to attract talent from across the globe to counter the aging population

Mr Juncker wants to redistribute migrants arriving in Greece and Italy throughout the rest of Europe

MEPs held banners in support of the Syrian and Iraqi migrants trying to land in Europe from north Africa

A source said details on whether migrants would be given work visas, limiting which countries they could move to, or passports, allowing them free movement, would be decided in the next few months.

Britain has long-standing opt-outs that have so far enabled it to refuse to take part in proposals to handle the migrant crisis. But under the new scheme for economic migrants, those wanting to move to Europe could be granted full EU citizenship that gives them the right to come to Britain.

As Mr Juncker, a former prime minister of Luxembourg, laid out his plans to deal with the migrant crisis, he warned: ‘We are not in a good place. There is a lack of Europe in the EU and there is a lack of union in the European Union. That has to change.’

Compulsory quotas will be used to share out asylum seekers already in Europe among EU countries – a scheme from which Britain is exempted. Countries will be fined 0.002 per cent of gross domestic product if they refuse to take their allocation.

But they will receive 6,000 euros (£4,400) for each migrant taken. In total, the relocations will lead to a 960million euro (£700million) bill, of which about 100million euros (£73million) will come from British taxpayers. Mr Juncker said he wanted to turn this into a permanent quota system to be used to distribute refugees in any future crisis.

He also raised the possibility of rewriting the Dublin Agreement, under which asylum seekers are obliged to stay in the first EU country they reach. Last year the UK was able to deport 1,000 people under these rules.

In other power grabs for Brussels, Mr Juncker called for asylum seekers to be allowed to work while their asylum applications were being processed, and also touched on the subject of Britain’s referendum on its membership of the EU.

Ukip leader Nigel Farage said Mr Juncker's plan would make it more likely that Britain will leave the EU

He said he was ‘totally convinced we will have a fair deal for Britain’, but rejected British calls for restrictions to free movement rules.

‘Freedom of movement of workers cannot be touched,’ he said. ‘These principles cannot be given up in negotiations.’

Throughout the speech, Mr Juncker was heckled by Ukip MEPs and at one point an Italian MEP wearing a mask of German Chancellor Angela Merkel walked down to his podium to shake his hand.

Mr Juncker told Nigel Farage, ‘the only quality we share is humour’, after the Ukip leader objected to being called a European.

In a debate following the speech, Mr Farage told Mr Juncker that his refusal to consider changing freedom of movement rules would lead to Britain voting to leave the EU.

He said: ‘I have a feeling that the British people will warm to you on a personal level but to suggest that getting rid of a few EU regulations is going to change our minds, sorry. Unless you give Mr Cameron back control and discretion over our borders the Brits will over the course of the next year, vote to leave.’