EUROPE - UKIP leader Gerard Batten has sparked controversy by claiming that the EU is based on a Nazi plan to rule the continent if they had won world war two. The London MEP said the European economic community, which Britain joined in 1973 and later became the EU, was a “Nazi legacy” that inspired current policies like farming subsidies. Batten made the comments at the European Parliament in Strasbourg during a debate on the future of Europe with Poland’s prime minister.
He said: “The Germans lost the shooting war but they did not lose their ambitions. Nazi Germany left us a legacy. Back in, I think it was 1942, when the Germans thought they were going to win the war, they wrote a plan for how they were going to govern their new empire. It was called the European economic community.”
“They were going to have interest rates linked to the Reichsmark, they were going to have a common agricultural policy, a common industrial policy, a common policy for everything. That plan resurfaced in 1957 as the European Economic Community.” Batten was heckled by other MEPs in the chamber as he made the remarks.