Tusk warns only alternative to EU is ‘chaos’

European Council president Donald Tusk warned that the only alternative to the EU is “chaos”.

He said he could no longer remain silent about the upcoming Brexit referendum, after former London mayor Boris Johnson compared the EU’s aims with Adolf Hitler’s.

“To defend does not mean to lecture anyone,” he said at a joint press conference with the Danish prime minister. “The British citizens will make this decision themselves an they do not need any whisperers, especially from Brussels.

“I understand this very well. But when I hear the EU being compared to the plans and projects of Adolf Hitler I cannot remain silent. Such absurd arguments should be completely ignored if they hadn’t been formulated by one of the most influential politicians of the ruling party.”

Tusk described the EU as a “firewall” against conflict between European countries.

“The banal truth is that the only alternative for the union is political chaos, the return to national egoisms, and in consequence, the triumph of anti-democratic tendencies, which can lead to history repeating itself.”

Boris Johnson, one of the most high-profile figures in the campaign for the UK to leave the EU, sparked criticism when he said that both Hitler and Napoleon had failed at unifying Europe and that the EU was “an attempt to do this by different methods”.

He has stood by his comments, dismissing criticism as an “artificial media twit storm”, and fellow Leave campaigners have defended him.