“EU is economic and democratic disaster”- European Parliament Member

The EU is a colonial and highly bureaucratic regime, and is not a structure the UK should be part of. That is according to Gerard Batten of the UK Independence Party, who is also a European Parliament Member.

“It is an economic and democratic disaster. First of all, there is no reason for the European Union. I mean, the way it was sold to people 40 years ago and has been ever since is that we must have it for trade and jobs. We do not need it for trade and jobs, even the European Union has backed down from that argument,” he said. “What we need is trade with Europe and the rest of the world, friendship and cooperation. We do not need to be members of this vast bureaucratic organization in order to achieve that.”

“What is actually worse than that is the loss of democracy. The Germans calculated in 2006 that about 83 per cent of new laws now come from the European Union, not from their own parliament. And in this report they question whether Germany could be really called a functional democracy any more because of this fact,” Batten added. “It is equally true for the UK, a similar type of country. 80 per cent of our laws now come from the institutions of the EU, which is not democratic, so how can we be a democracy?”