Well known Eursceptic Nigel Farage spoke as part of the first panel at the conference. Sitting next to Romanian Commissioner Leonard Orban, he stated, among other things:

Put yourself in the place of a Romanian. You see yourself earning 10 to 20 times what your are worth at home. That is why the political class of Eastern Europe wanted to join Europe…

It’s fair to say that this generated a fair amount of comment during the rest of the panel. The Commissioner himself spoke last, reminding Nigel that:

In my country, some 70% of my countrymen wanted to join the European Union…

Presumably they’re not all working in Brussels today. Nevertheless, Nigel Farage did find ‘common cause’ with the conference’s aims - to find out how, watch an extract: