My speech from the State of the Union address today

Speech in Strasbourg, Comission Work Programme.

President Barroso will be presenting his proposals for the above programme. This will be the text of my speech.

The Lisbon strategy's aim in 2000 was to make the EU "the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion",  As we know it failed.

And now looking at this proposal for a work programme the EU will continue to be a failure

According to Eurostat, industrial output in the EU fell by 19% during the economic crisis. In comparison to 17% in the US,  Downturn in industrial output in the Eurozone has been worse than in the EU 27 as a whole, suggesting that the Euro is a burden to recovery  

Even the EU´s own figures show that more job growth is created outside the eurozone than in.

And yet Unelected President Barroso says that the UK is obliged to join the euro.

No thank you very much - the UK needs to divorce ourselves away from this covern of failure and despair - to instigate a free trade agreement with Europe and the world. Let us be gone and plague you no more

For the sake of my country, be gone with your damaging regulations, be gone with your harmful harmonisation, be gone with your destructive laws, be gone with your affronts our democracy and be gone with your begging bowls

Plague us no more

Questioning the President of the European Commission.

One of the advantages I have as a non-attached member of the European Parliament - I am not a member of any political group - is that I have more opportunities to speak on important issues. Within the political groups it tends to be only the Presidents of the groups who get important speaking time.

On Tuesday I was able to question Jose Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission. I asked him who it might be possible to have common EU policies when time and time again we see an inability to reach concensus on importnat issues such as foreign relations and security and defence. I suggested that it would not be possible to implement common policy with some loss of democracy for thye EU member states.

The President's reply was evasive to say the least. I think I hit a raw nerve.

I was also able to ask a supplementary question concerning pan-European political parties. He confirmed to me that these parties are an integral part of EU integration, and the development of the EU as a state in its own right.

We must be aware of this, and not be seduced - as some clearly are - by the promise of extra cash if our own politicians allow themselves to be subsumed into these wretched pan-European political parties.