On a visit to the EU Parliament by Kanye West

You would think apparitions of an attention-hoarding rapper would be non-existent in Benelux. But sure enough, some version of Kanye West made an appearance, whether he liked it or not, on Wednesday when former UKIP leader Nigel Farage went on a lengthy tirade against the president of the EU, former Belgian prime minister Herman Van Rompuy. (The full tirade on YouTube, courtesy of UKIP.)

While evoking Kanye's crass, stage-crashing abilities, Farage compared the first president of the EU to a low-grade bank clerk and called him a quiet assassin of European nation-states. Included in his tirade was a slam on Belgium as a whole, saying that it was a non-country aimed to make all of Europe a place where nation-states ceased to exist. It is widely expected that Farage will be reprimanded for this speech, at most a 10-day suspension.

The Eurosceptic icon is no stranger to controversy in Belgium. Most notably in February 2008, when Prince Charles addressed the EU Parliament on Climate Change, Farage drew attention for refusing to applaud his future head of state at the end of his speech.

However, Farage's barrage on the 62-year-old Belgian wasn't just for the sake of getting free publicity in his campaign to unseat Commons Speaker John Bercow in his Buckinghamshire constituency this spring. Officials in France and Germany, the continent's two major economic engines, have complained about Van Rompuy over-stepping his authority in dealing with the economic crisis in Greece and declaring himself the point man for all European nations in discussions involving G20 nations.

Such a trampling, if accurate, coincides with Britain's Baroness Ashton, the EU's new number two role as High Representative, essentially letting the current president of the European Commission, Spain's José Manuel Barroso, impose himself as the EU's ambassador to the United States. All the while, Ashton, Barroso and Von Rompuy are suppose to represent the collective foreign interests of 27 nations, not just the establishments that not only meet in Brussels but also in Strasbourg once a year for the sake of appeasing the French.

This huge mess might make for an interesting rap by Kanye, if "Golddigger" isn't sufficient for Eurosceptics' tastes.