Full steam ahead: Brussels draws up plan for 'EU navy' - by Justin Stares in Brussels
The European Commission has drawn up plans to set up a European coastguard, which critics fear is a back-door attempt by Brussels to create an EU navy with its own powers to stop and search shipping. Plans to upgrade the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) into a fully-fledged coastguard are buried in a document revising European Union (EU) transport policy that is due to be published next month.
The commission document is written in French and entitled Préparer la Mobilité de Demain (Preparing Tomorrow's Mobility). In it, the commission says it believes the time has come to consider the "concept of a European coastguard". Such a body would improve passenger safety at sea and environmental protection legislation, it says. Its main role initially would be to avert maritime pollution disasters, such as the oil slick that devastated French and Spanish Atlantic coasts in 2002, when the aged Prestige tanker snapped in half. The coastguard would be easy to implement, the commission notes, because the EU can "from today call on the support of the safety agencies", including EMSA.
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