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The European Union might be hobbled by the departure of Britain and divided over accepting refugees, but the fundamentals of the bloc remain sound, said European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker on Wednesday.

In a speech at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, Mr. Juncker pointed to the success of a new European investment fund as proof of the union's stability, proposing to double it to $707 billion by 2022 to counteract a post-economic crisis decline in spending on infrastructure projects such as airports and broadband networks.

"Our European investment fund will provide a total of at least 500 billion [Euros] of investment by 2020, and will work to reach 630 billion by 2022," he said, according to Reuters. "If with member states contribute we can get there even faster."

Juncker's speech was perhaps the most resounding pitch for the EU's durability since the Brexit vote, and marked a rebuttal to the battering many of the bloc's officials took during the campaign and in its immediate wake.

Juncker also suggested that the EU move toward a common military force, something the British have long opposed on the grounds of conflicting with NATO.  Junker said such a force "should be in complement to NATO." "More defense in Europe doesn't mean less transatlantic solidarity," reported the BBC. 

Another EU investment fund, Juncker said, should be created for the private sector in Africa as part of a plan to curb emigration to Europe. And the former Luxembourg premier reserved veiled criticism for eastern European leaders who have refused to accept refugees from North Africa and the Middle East, with Juncker saying that solidarity among EU leaders "must come from the heart."

"The European Union doesn't have enough union," he said, according to Reuters, adding that divisions had created space for "galloping populism."

Kit Gillet wrote for º£½Ç´óÉñ in August, as part of a 10-part series exploring the European identity, that in Romania, which joined the EU in 2007, the Brexit campaign's anti-immigrant rhetoric was received by much of the public as indicative of eastern Europe's mixed acceptance in the union:

In Slovakia, too, enthusiasm for membership in the bloc has waned in the 12 succeeding years. And it has helped feed the rise of an extreme right wing, as º£½Ç´óÉñ's Sara Miller Llana noted in June:

Not everywhere in Britain has the anti-immigrant feeling that helped power the Brexit campaign been so prevalent. As the Monitor wrote in June, the city of Leicester has gone from being a place known for calls to keep out foreigners to one held up as a model of a co-ethnic harmony:

Juncker’s speech comes ahead of a summit in Bratislava on Friday, where the 27 EU member states (minus Britain) are to discuss the future of the union.

This report contains material from Reuters.