Nigel Farage has said that the European Union is increasingly being controlled by big business and centralised bureaucracy, in a sensational warning that the forthcoming European elections will be the battleground to bring back national democracy.
In a strongly worded speech against the "dreamers" in the European Parliament, the Ukip leader went on to argue that people don’t want a "United States of Europe" but a Europe of sovereign states trading and working together.
With Antonis Samaras settling into his role as EU President, Farage launched into an extraordinary attack against the Greek Prime Minister.
Referring to the ongoing financial crisis in Greece, the MEP said: “Well I must congratulate you Mr Samaras for getting the Greek Presidency off to such a cracking start."
He sarcastically remarked how Greeks "will be dancing in the streets" at Samaras' "successful" negotiation on MiFiD reminding him that "60% of youth are unemployed and the neo-nazi party are on the march."
Almost a third of the Greek workforce remain unemployed and the ongoing debt crisis sees the country needing to find an extra €11 billion to pay its debts this year alone.
Addressing Samaras, Farage said the country was now under foreign control after surrendering its democracy to the EU.
“You can’t make any decisions, you have been bailed out, and you have surrendered democracy, the thing your country invented in the first place."
“We are run now by big business, big banks, and in the shape of Mr Barroso, big bureaucrats," he added.
"That is what these European elections are really going to be all about," he said. "It is going to be a battle of national democracy versus EU state bureaucracy."
As the elections rapidly approach, analysis in The Economist, claimed anti-EU parties could double the number of seats they hold in the 751-seat European parliament, up from 12% to as high as 25%.