Otto von Habsburg was, by standards of European royalty, a good man, in that unlike most scions of fallen royal houses he did not merely sat on old money and wasted away in "high" society, but instead used his influence and his life to pursue better, more progressive causes, but the author of the article is full of it. Royal ass-kisser.
He contributed, yes, just as many politicians contributed, to the pan-European cause, but he could hardly be the "father" of the European Parliament. He had some influence among the nostalgic royalists by virtue of his prestigious name, and one could argue he used it for mostly good, yet he was in no possible way a giant of European politics. A good man's life -- if he indeed lived it -- will speak for itself; there is no need for lies.
The Habsburgs brought themselves down, fair and square. The blood of countless revolutions lie in their hands. They had plenty of opportunities to
not oppress the workers, enslave the peasantry with serfdom, and retain the German aristocracy's dominance in all aspects of power. Otto was blameless of course of all this, having neither reigned nor ruled (and so ironically was Franz Ferdinand, the most progressive of all Habsburg princes, who once proposed to turn the Austro-Hungarian Empire into a "United States" for the cultures of the Empire), but the author would have you believe that somehow an Austro-Hungary that did not face WW1 would turn into a haven of federalism and democracy. The author also has a clear beef with socialism, with the EU (which he himself earlier praised as one of Otto's handiworks, uh-huh), with progressivism in general. Paleolithic reactionary, he does his idol no credit.