EU parliament 'used to be a rest home'

Leading MEP Graham Watson has admitted that parliament has been "used mainly as a rest home."

His candid comments are likely to be seized upon by eurosceptics who continue to dismiss the parliament, the only directly-elected EU institution, as having a strictly limited role in the EU decision-making process.

Watson, who was first elected an MEP in 1994 and is a former leader of the ALDE group, says that in his first 15 years in parliament he had three "major frustrations."

"The first was that the parliament I joined in 1994 was used by political parties mainly as rest home for those who had served careers in national politics or as a first step on the ladder for those who sought them."

Another frustration, he says, was that a "significant" number of deputies believed it desirable to have a "drawbridge up" Europe.

"This struck me as astonishing testimony to the difficulty of conquering ignorance," he says.

Watson, one of the longest-serving MEPs, says the 1994 parliament was "marked by an influx of younger politicians seeking to make a political career in the EU rather than in national politics."

This trend has continued, he says, in the parliaments elected in 1999 and 2004.

"Increasingly, Brussels has attracted a new breed of continental politicians: young, polyglot , ambitious, inter-culturally sensitive and more diverse in gender."

Even so, he says the number of MEPs from ethnic groups is still "pitifully small."

In his new book, Building a Liberal Europe, Watson takes a swipe at other political groups, branding the EPP, parliament's largest, as "inherently unstable" and the Socialists as being a party in "terminal decline."

He says, "The opportunity for a stronger centre is immense."