Refugee crisis must be today’s priority, regardless working programmes and legislative changes to be adopted, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said in his first State of the European Union speech.

In his words, around 500,000 people have crossed the sea towards Europe since the beginning of the year, most of them from Syria. He said that asylum-seekers now crowding in to Italy, Greece and Hungary.

The EC President stated that now it is not the time to fear from the number of refugees, but the time has come for united actions for dealing the refugee crisis.

“The time has come for showing humanity. We, as Europeans must remember that Europe is a continent where in one or another time everyone had been a refuge. Our common history is marked by millions of Europeans seeking salvation,” Jean-Claude Juncker remarked.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said the EU is “not in a good place” and that it needed to move beyond “business as usual” to address the daunting political challenges facing the bloc, Politco reported

“Now is not the time to go ahead willy-nilly, business-as-usual,” Juncker told members of the European Parliament and other EU leaders. “Please don’t feel that’s the case.” In his first State of the European Union speech as head of the EU’s executive body, Juncker spelled out progress he had made in making the Commission more “political” but also criticized member states and political leaders for failing to show solidarity.