Your South West European Parliamentary constituency includes Gibraltar, which is why this story of Gibraltar’s territorial waters being registered as a Spanish Site of Community Importance under EU environmental legislation popped up on the radar. It’s enough to shivver Sir Francis Drake’s timbers!
It turns out that the Spanish application for the water to be registered to them had been approved because the UK had not objected to it. But why not, surely they’d staked their title to the waters previously?
Over now to South West Lib Dem MEP Graham Watson (whose dad was in the navy in Gibraltar).
“I assumed this was an oversight on our government’s part, inexcusable but not unheard of,” he told the PRSD.
“On further study I have discovered that in the UK’s application for an SCI [Site of Community Importance], Gibraltar was positioned at longitude 5 degrees 22 minutes East of Greenwich. Yet Gibraltar is situated at 5 degrees 22 minutes West of the prime meridian.
“In other words the UK’s submission placed it in waters north of Algiers, which means that the Spanish application did not overlap with our SCI.”
Now Graham starts getting mad.
“The litany of UK bungling over matters regarding the Rock gets longer and longer. Which bureaucrat in the cuckoo’s nest of government policy-making is responsible?
“If the Spanish Armada had made such a basic error, they’d have foundered before Drake even had the opportunity to sink them.
“Were it not for the EU’s having abolished the death penalty, this government official might be hung, drawn and quartered for such a crass mistake!”
It’s all just another step towards Spain claiming the Rock for itself (whereas we all know it’s in the South West!)
“We should never have agreed to Spain joining the EU until they renounced their claim,” said Graham.
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