 Growth in the EU, already feeble, has more or less ground to a halt with youth unemployment reaching staggering proportions. The EU badly needs its own post-war German-style economic miracle, but far from slashing regulation, the mountainous burden keeps growing. It constantly wants to achieve growth through harmonisation, top-down control and central direction, and we know those don't work. It militates against precisely the kind of individual initiative and innovation that is at the heart of economic growth. Regulation is the enemy of competition, and competition is the engine of growth. Therefore, it is no surprise that the European Union has become an economic basket case. Every continent now is outgrowing Europe. When you think of the growth rates in China, and then you look at the growth rate in the European Union, that tells me that we are in the wrong place. We joined the European Union, and it's become the world's only declining trade bloc. Far from hitching our wagon to a dynamic economic locomotive, we've shackled ourselves to a corpse. The people have never given a bigger vote of no confidence in Brussels. Today, world markets were nervously watching. Stock market has not been reassured. What the European Union has become in the 21st century is what Britain was when it was the sick man of Europe. Despite decades of economic decline, the EU elite carries on regardless. They are unmoved by criticism and troubled by popular discontent. But the frustration of ordinary people is beginning to show. We now have to focus on constructing a firewall to prevent contagion within the eurozone. What you can see everywhere is a conflict between the visions of a rather narrow kind of professional middle class which has dominated European politics and the reaction against it by the larger bulk of the European population. Eventually, if you've stuffed dictatorship down the throats of people who don't want it, they will rebel. Unfortunately, in many places, it's taking a very unpleasant form of right-wing populist nationalism. Extremism at both ends is being fostered by the anti-democratic nature of the European Union. What do we see? Far-right parties, ultra-nationalist parties. We don't know what the future of Europe is going to look like, but at the moment, it's not looking good. We don't know what political forces are going to rise in the future. We don't know what conflicts we might be dragged into. Far from being it's safer for us to be in the EU, there are dangers that go along with us, being members of the EU, being dragged into situations we don't want to get in. Marine Le Pen's far-right party came first, winning 25% of the vote.