European Election Candidates: Time to put best foot forward

The European Union — despite all its faults, shorthand for the peace and prosperity most of us enjoy today — is under attack on many fronts.

On its western flank, Brexit is undermining decades of social progress, while on its eastern fringes growing Polish and Hungarian autocracy challenges core values of the project.

A changed, less-supportive attitude in the White House adds to those challenges, as does stirring Russian nationalism.

In May, a new EU parliament will be formed, when 705 MEPs will be elected. That seems an important moment for Europe to put its very best foot forward.

To do that each country must send impressive, experienced politicians.

It is therefore disappointing that Fianna Fáil is, apparently, discouraging experienced TDs from entering the EU race.

Party leader, Micheál Martin, seems reluctant to encourage Leinster House veterans to resign from the Dáil so they might contest the May election.

Apart at all from aping a floundering Theresa May, by putting his party before country, as she has done, Mr Martin sends a message that stretches the credibility of the EU parliament further.

At this moment, that seems precisely the wrong message. The EU parliament needs all the energy and determination — and talent, too — it can muster, if the EU is not to be further undermined.

Making it a Seanad-on-the-Zenne for the rejected and untested is, at best, shortsighted and, at worst, dangerously unwise in an increasingly challenged, globalised world.