Batten: EU Election Voters Have Choice Between ‘Freedom’ and ‘Submission’

UKIP leader Gerard Batten has said Europeans will have a choice between voting to give up more control to the EU and voting to “return democratic powers to the nation state.”

“These elections will divide people into two distinct groups,” Mr Batten said in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, on Tuesday.

“One group will be those who consent to be governed by a foreign power, the European Union. The second will be those who vote to rebel against EU integration and in favour of returning democratic powers to the nation state.

“One group will be voting for freedom and independence the other group will be voting for subservience and submission.”

Predicting that there will be “a great populist vote across Europe,” the UKIP leader continued, “One thing we can be sure of is that Eurosceptic MEPs will return in big numbers.

“Their voters will be voting for a return to democratic accountability, an end to austerity measures, and for their economies to run in their interests and for their benefit.

“They will be voting to end mass, uncontrolled migration, they will be voting for parties that want to preserve their culture and their civilisation.”

Recent polls by Opinium, YouGov, and Open Europe have predicted that UKIP and Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party will be giving establishment parties a run for their money on the May 23rd European Parliament elections, with others predicting that across Europe, populists could win a third of seats.

European countries have taken a turn towards the right-populist and conservative in recent years in reaction both to the open borders policies of the bloc’s larger economies and Eurocrats’ endeavour to push for greater federalisation, diminishing the power of the nation state.

Notably, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, France’s Marine Le Pen, and Polish conservatives are campaigning to take back control of Europe, returning it to the people.

Chief of the right-populist League Party — set to become the second largest party in the EU parliament — Salvini officially launched the “European Spring” last week when he met with colleagues from Finland, Denmark, and Germany, after having already secured the cooperation for the Austrian Freedom Party and Le Pen’s National Rally.

At the launch, Salvini accused “bureaucrats and do-gooders” of “burying the European dream,” pledging that his populist supergroup would found a “new Europe.”