It may be seen as a more respected competition but the top players still see it as second best.
With the Suarez scenario you're assuming a perfect world with everything else being equal, which is misguided we know that's never the case. If everything else was the same and one club had Europa League football and one didn't, even assuming that the persuasion methods, city, weather for the clubs was exactly the same, then yes, perhaps the player would be more likely to join the EL side but as that's never the case there's no point discussing it. Whether they have EL football or not is at the bottom of a list of why or why not a player should join a club.
If you look at the list of the top moves last year, of the top 20 (as decided by Goal.com but that doesn't affect us here), only two players moved to clubs with Europa League football, and even in those cases that was more down to the fee paid than the club having Europa League football (Falcao to Atletico, 40M, Pastore to PSG, 42M). As far as I know no one else bid such obscene figures for them. If you look at other top transfers in the last five years, that percentage decreases even further.
List for reference:
http://www.goal.com/en/news/1717/edi...the-final-list