BUNGLING UK GOVERNMENT LOSES CONTROL OF GIBRALTAR'S TERRITORIAL WATERS
November 9, 2009 12:00 AM
Originally published by Sir Graham Watson MEP
Originally published by Sir Graham Watson MEP
MEP for SW England and Gibraltar Graham Watson has discovered how UK government bungling has allowed Spain to register Gibraltar's territorial waters as a Spanish Site of Community Importance under EU environmental legislation.
Gibraltar and the UK were dismayed to discover recently that a Spanish application for an SCI covering the waters around the Rock had been approved by the European Commission. Graham Watson MEP tabled a parliamentary question demanding how this could have happened when the UK had already registered the area around the Rock as a UK SCI. No clear reply was received, other than that the UK had not objected to the Spanish application.
"I assumed this was an oversight on our government's part", the MEP commented; "inexcusable but not unheard of. On further study I have discovered that in the UK's application for an SCI, 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."
The South West MEP, whose father served in Gib as a Royal Naval officer and who is a qualified marine navigator himself, said: "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!"
Graham Watson MEP has asked the Foreign Secretary to endeavour to correct the matter so that no quarter be given to Spanish claims to sovereignty. "We should never have agreed to Spain joining the EU until they renounced their claim", he added.
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