Farage: The EU Is ‘Building an Empire. Why Deny It?’

Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage has criticised senior Eurocrat Guy Verhofstadt for praising the new “world order” of “empires”, but said it was time to be straight about Brussels’ intentions to build a new European Empire.

The Brexit Party leader condemned the remarks of Verhofstadt, who said during the Liberal Democrat conference on Saturday: “The world order of tomorrow is not a world order based on nation-states, on countries — it’s a world order that is based on empires.”

“The world of tomorrow is a world of empires, in which we Europeans, and you British, can only defend your interests, your way of life, by doing it together, in a European framework, and in European union,” he added.

The Belgian politician, leader of the left-progressive Alliance of Liberals and Democrats in Europe (ALDE) in the European Parliament, had called in May for the European Union to become an empire “capable of defending our interests”, but is not the first EU politician to do so.

In 2007, former President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso had praised the EU “empire”, saying: “Sometimes I like to compare the EU as a creation to the organisation of empire. We have the dimension of empire.”

Mr Farage evoked the former Commission chief’s words while criticising Verhofstadt on his LBC radio show on Monday, saying an EU empire “is where they are going”.

“That is what they want because Barroso, one of the previous bosses of the European Commission, he said: ‘We’re building the first ever non-militaristic empire.’

“They’re building an empire. Why deny it?” Mr Farage asked.

To go with this empire, the EU is also building its own military, after the majority of its member states signed the Permanent Structured Cooperation process, or PESCO, in November 2017, which is key to the European Defence Union plans set out by outgoing President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker, who called for a “fully fledged” EU army by 2025.

And while Verhofstadt had called for an empire “capable of defending our interests”, French President Emmanuel Macron made the extraordinary claim in November 2018 that the bloc needs a “real European army” in order to “protect ourselves with respect to China, Russia and even the United States of America”.

The French progressive politician’s call for a “real European army” was backed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Mr Verhofstadt, and the most powerful of the Brussels bodies the European Commission. Two month later, Germany’s then-defence minister Ursula von der Leyen said that “Europe’s army is already taking shape.”

Mr Farage criticised Mrs von der Leyen, now President-Elect of the European Commission, in July as a “fanatic for building a European army” and accused her of readying to lead a European Union that seeks to “take control of every single aspect of our lives”.

“She wants to build a centralised, undemocratic, updated form of Communism where nation state parliaments will cease to have any relevance at all,” he warned.