Nigel Farage, on behalf of the EFD Group. – Mr President, I must congratulate you, Mr Samaras, for getting the Greek Presidency off to such a cracking start. I am sure your overnight successful negotiations in the trialogue on the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) will have them dancing in the streets of Athens. No matter that your country, very poorly advised by Goldman Sachs, joined a currency which it was never suited to; no matter that 30 % are unemployed, that 60 % of young people are unemployed, that a neo-Nazi party is on the march, that there was a terrorist attack on the German embassy.

No, do not worry about all that, because the trialogue on MiFID has been a success, and in many ways it sums up the two Europes: the Europe that is talked about in here by the dreamers, who want to impose a united states of Europe with an identity and currency, and the real world out there. And you come here, Mr Samaras, and tell us that you represent the sovereign will of the Greek people? Well, I am sorry, but you are not in charge of Greece, and I suggest you rename and rebrand your party. It is called New Democracy. I suggest you call it No Democracy, because Greece is now under foreign control.

You cannot make any decisions, you have been bailed out and you have surrendered. Democracy: the thing your country invented in the first place, and you cannot admit that joining the euro was a mistake, because of course Mr Papandreou did that, didn’t he? He even said there should be a referendum in Greece – and within 48 hours the unholy trinity that now run this European Union had him removed and replaced by an ex-Goldman Sachs employee puppet.

We are run now by big business, big banks and, in the shape of Mr Barroso, big bureaucrats, and that is what these European elections are really going to be all about. It is going to be a battle of national democracy versus EU state democracy. Whatever you may say in this Chamber, the people out there do not want a united states of Europe, they want a Europe of sovereign states trading and working together, and I believe the European elections are going to mark a watershed. Until now everybody has thought – much as they may not like the development of the European Union – that it was inevitable. That myth of inevitability will be shattered by the European elections this year.