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"My top priority is to mobilize more funds to provide more funds for people living in Turkey, Jordan and other countries. There are three million people in camps. They all want to go home, we need to help them go home, but we need to make their lives acceptable before they go home," the Commission vice president said.

"I believe it is our moral duty to go into these areas, select the people and bring them into the EU legally if it is better for them than to stay there," he said.

Timmermans said Italy and Greece felt they were forced to start letting the masses of people through their territory because no one heard their pleas. "That's why we need to change the Dublin agreement," he said.

There has to be a mechanism to trigger pan-European solidarity when some member states are overwhelmed. "If revision of the Dublin agreement doesn't involve this, there's no point in doing it," the Commission vice president said. "Either you have solidarity by taking a number of people, or you help pay for them to be treated elsewhere."

As Timmermans said, solidarity is not a la carte. "If we are in a mode of not sharing solidarity, people will take decisions by emotion against their own interest. That is what the Commission tries to avoid at all costs, it will not help to say no against everything."

"The strength of the union is we do all things together," he said.

Timmermans denied that most of the people coming to Europe are economic migrants. "Most of them are coming from Syria, Iraq or Eritrea and they are refugees," he said.

Turkey needs the migration agreement with the European Union as much as the EU, but there are also deep strategic needs behind the deal, European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans said on Friday evening.

"Turkey was increasingly suffering because it became part of the business model of the smugglers. Some of the money would be used to finance terrorism and the whole situation threatened to get out of control. Breaking the business model is also in Turkey's interest," Timmermans said.

He added that at the same time it is naive to think that strategic engagement with Turkey is only dictated by the necessity to stop migration flows. "When you look at the geostrategic environment and the long-term challenges beyond the Syria conflict, having a strategic relationship with Turkey is absolutely necessary," Timmermans said.

Both Turkey and the EU understand that there are many problems, which they have to solve together, he said. "This is the new normal in our relations with Turkey," he added.

In connection with the closing of the Balkan migration route, a deal with Turkey is necessary because the EU cannot leave Greece alone with the migration flow, Timmermans said.

"We are sticking to our side of the agreement and I would applaud the day we could open two new political chapters in the talks with Turkey. If Turkey is serious about joining the EU, it will need to carry out some very serious reforms. At present we are drifting apart in terms of human rights, treatment of journalists and the autonomy of the judicial system," he said.

The fundamental idea of European cooperation is that law trumps power, and when that fundamental premise is sacrificed to populism the EU will not survive, European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans said.

This fundamental understanding in its turn rests on the premise that there is equality between democracy, rule of law and respect for European rights. "You cannot trade one for the others, it will destroy all," the former Dutch foreign minister said.

The fundamental notion of illiberal democracy meanwhile is that the democratic mandate trumps all and gives you the mandate to codify human rights, Timmermans said.

"That is a development that we see in several EU countries and not only in eastern Europe," he said. "If you neglect the protection of the rule of law for too long, in the end of the day, it takes only one election to get you in deep trouble."

"We have collectively the duty to defend the rule of law. In the European Union we need to be sure that the judge at the national level is independent from the executive to determine whether the EU law is applicable. This is the only way the EU can function," Timmermans said.

"If we do not respect law, if we put it out to debate, our democracy will not hold. Our nations can survive populism for some time, but the EU cannot. If we do not bring the premise of law and the equilibrium back, then we will have to find another way of cooperating in Europe because the EU will not survive this," he said.