Sir Graham Robert Watson (born 23 March 1956) is a British Liberal Democrat politician who served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for South West England from 1994 to 2014.

[2] Graham Watson was born in Rothesay on the Isle of Bute (Scotland, United Kingdom), the eldest of six children.

He returned to Scotland to attend Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh where he graduated in 1979 with a Bachelor of Arts in modern languages.

On graduating from university in 1979, Watson worked first as a freelance interpreter and translator and then (1980–83) as an administrator at Paisley College of Technology.

[3] Between 1983 and 1987 he also served as head of the private office of then leader of the British Liberal Party, Sir David Steel.

Accompanied by Robin Teverson, elected later the same night, he sat with the Group of the European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party (ELDR).

Watson was re-elected in this constituency as the sole Liberal Democrat member at the 1999 European Parliamentary election.

[4] During this term he led the ten British Liberal Democrats in the parliament[3] and between 1999 and 2002 he held the chair of the Committee on Citizens' Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs.

[1] In that position he steered through Parliament freedom of information provisions and the legislation providing for a European Arrest Warrant.

He also chaired a global network of legislators campaigning for a switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy known as The Climate Parliament, of which he had been a founder member in the late 1990s.

In 2015 Watson was appointed by the UK Government to sit on the European Economic and Social Committee, an advisory body with a five-year mandate.