EU parliament used to be a place to dump 2nd rate politicians who: (1) Were appreciated by their party, but not so much by the voters. The real politics happen

EU parliament used to be a place to dump 2nd rate politicians who: (1) Were appreciated by their party, but not so much by the voters. The real politics happened in the domestic parliament, so the parties would run their 1st rate politicians in the domestic elections. (2) And were personally very interested in the EU, and thus wanted to run. We have been sending 2nd rate but very pro-EU politicians to the EU parliament. So the opinions of the members of the parliament are quite far from the average opinions of the EU populace. We are slowly beginning to realize that the European Parliament actually matters, and we should give some serious thought about who we vote there.