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:

Download Journalist and blogger Willy De Backer comments on the “communication gap” theory.

Many of you are here checking for material from today’s conference, and we have lots of material to share with you over the next few days. Check back often as there will be more videos and blog posts discussing the proceedings of the conference.

The first video today will be a comment by Jean Lambert, Greens-EFA, sharing her views on blogging during the first panel of the conference.

Christophe Leclercq explains the Why, Who and What of the conference tomorrow.

Download

We’ve whipped up this blog to cover the Euractiv Conference at the European Parliament tomorrow. This is where you’ll find impressions, downloads, conference material and interviews done in and around the event.

The Parliament doesn’t have wifi in the conference room, so don’t expect it in real-time.

If you’re coming to the conference then look out for the guys with the cameras, audio gear and laptops.

For now we’re making sure all systems are go. Right, you’ll already find our flickr photo group and a feed that will show all blog posts throughout the internet where people mention the conference, plus some useful links.

If you want to contribute to this blog, then go right ahead and comment. If you want to go further - make your own posts, add in your photos, or ‘feed’ in your own blog - then join in.

Testing the new euractiv events twitter account. WIll be used when we need to twit about acitivities here in Brussels or beyond.