My friend Michael Palmer, who has died aged 81, was the consummate European. He was born in London, but after getting a first at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and a spell at the thinktank Political and Economic Planning, he worked successively for the parliamentary assemblies of the Council of Europe, Western European Union and Nato before becoming a director in the European parliament in 1973, based in Luxembourg, when the UK joined the European Economic Community.
He later became director general of research and documentation in the parliament, but his most outstanding work was in the committees, where his vision for Europe and how it might be attained, together with his linguistic skill, influenced many reports drafted for members of the parliament's political affairs committee.
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