Hello, Sailor 1

Lee Rotherham European Union

Today is European Maritime Day. As the Commission explains, "It is an occasion to highlight the crucial role played by the Oceans and Seas and will contribute to a better visibility of the maritime sectors and more recognition of the importance they play in everyday life."

I point this out in case you are one of the hundreds of millions of Europeans who didn’t know that 20 May each year is European Maritime Day. Since it is being celebrated with a "stakeholder conference" in Brussels for the gravy trainers, after first being launched in that other famous coastal city Strasbourg, you are forgiven.

"Europe would not be Europe without the seas. Ever since Europa was carried across the ocean, the seas have been central to our culture, imagination and wealth," gushed Mr Barroso last year, before claiming John Cabot, Vasco da Gama, and an obscure Flemish atlas maker for the EU. "This is why the European Commission has come up in recent years with clear proposals on maritime safety and on the protection of the marine environment, which deserve to be upheld by Member States and all other decision makers."

Not quite, Mr Barroso: that is precisely why the Commission should hand back the management of the maritime ecosystems back to national control, and downwards from there to the communities that rely on them. The Common Fisheries Policy would have Cabot spinning in his grave, had he perished elsewhere than in the grey Atlantic north.

Lee Rotherham

Lee is a Research Fellow at the TPA. Co-author of the hit Bumper Books of Government Waste, he is an extensively published EU expert and front bench adviser.

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