On the Atlantic seaboard, there has long been strong culture of fish as part of the national cuisine backed, until recently, by substantial fishing fleets that once dominated the national fisheries of each country. Though we still have the taste for fish, the madness that is the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) has done for fish stocks and fishing fleets.

The Dutch have their ‘Hollandse Nieuwe’, raw herring, the arrival of which in spring is greeted with something like a festival atmosphere; the Spanish lust after merluza, which we know as hake and which lies at the very heart of Spanish cuisine; the Portuguese their Bacalhau, salted Norwegian cod, for which they say there is a recipe for every day of the year; and we British with our consumption of prodigious amounts of cod by way of the great national dish, ‘fish and chips’ which, at its very best, is a sublime experience.

Unfortunately we have managed in the short span of thirty-five years to reduce the stocks of some of our staple fish to near-extinction levels, a circumstance for which the EU and its daft fishing policy must bear heavy responsibility. For example we have an elaborate system of quotas which means that if a trawler which has a quota for cod catches a large quantity of hake for which it does not have authority to land, then the hake, by now dead, is simply tipped back into the sea, useless to everyone but the seagulls and the seals.

Only little Belgium is exempt from the worst of this: sensibly they expend their fishy passion on the humble mussel which is, of course, capable of being farmed and is thus highly sustainable and for which they have a splendid variety of quite excellent recipes, though the simplest – mosselen met frieten, mussels and French fries – is, as is so often the case when you keep it simple, one of the very best.

And, as any Belgian you care to ask will tell you, some of the world’s best mussels may be found in the mussel beds of Holland’s Zeeland from whence huge quantities of mussels make the trip each year to end their days in the eateries and homes of Belgium, there to be converted into gastronomic delights. (A genial, though somewhat outdated survey of this passion may be found here and anyone interested in my Saffron Mussels may contact me through Paul Belien!)

Britain has suffered particularly badly from the CFP. Once we had enormous specialist fishing fleets in pretty well every small port on every coast. Then Edward Heath in his desperation to subjugate us to the then European Common Market made a gift of control of our fisheries to them as a sweetener.

Since then our fisheries have seen an effective free for all that turned to plunder when Spain and Portugal with their huge deep-sea fleets joined the EU. In the quarter century since then the UK fishing fleet has, quite literally been decimated and ports from which fishing fleets had set sail for hundreds of years and returned with fish aplenty now lie silent save for the put-put of the marine diesels of fancy pleasure craft.

Now there is a real chance that cod will disappear completely from the North Sea and our other waters and the decommissioning of our fishing fleet continues apace. Other fish species face similar problems. The massive destruction of our fishing communities not only damages our economy whilst still allowing huge foreign industrial fleets to thrive, it devastates and impoverishes our culture and its diversity. In short the CFP has been a madness which has given a massive short-term benefit to some but gutted our own industry.

So we learn that Nicolas Sarkozy of France, which has to a lesser extent also seen damage to its fishing interests, has decided to promise an effective dismantling of the CFP as it now stands. For in a speech to French fishermen at Boulogne-sur-mer he told them that he would be pushing for an end to, or at the very least a weakening of, the policy of species quotas. It was, he said, ‘time to get out of’ the quotas scheme which has dominated the CFP since its inception. Though his fisheries minister has since back-pedalled somewhat on this threat, it will doubtless have sent a frisson through the office of the EU Fisheries Commissioner.

What is interesting about this proclaimed objective is that Sarkozy should make such a pronouncement at all. After all in matters piscatorial the EU rules supreme and, in theory, France has no power to promise unilaterally to sweep away the restrictions of the CFP. But where France is concerned the normal rules do not apply. What France wants it usually ends up getting, because France does not play by the same set of rules that the rest of us do. For France the EU is simply an opportunity to secure advantages and if it does not get what it wants, it simply ignores the rules, even if that means large fines being imposed.

It is no accident that this is being floated just now on the cusp of the French Presidency of the EU in June (and its de facto control of the Slovenian Presidency in the first half of the year through the assistance that inexperienced Slovenia has sought from France’s civil service): here is a splendid chance to drive through changes to the policy which will be entirely to France’s liking.

Though French opposition politicians have condemned him for his ‘demagoguery’, Sarkozy is a shrewd operator who is unlikely to have made such a promise unless he had a clear plan as to how he was going to bully the EU into giving way. And when you are in the driving seat that is the EU presidency, the chance to arrange deals is not merely available but is obligatory: otherwise what would be the point of holding of the presidency if it was not to advance national interests as hard as possible?

No British politician would make such a promise, in part because we kowtow to Brussels far too easily and partly because we do not play the game the way the French do: indeed we seem not to play the game at all but meekly obey the rules. So expect the back-room deals to be already under way as France threatens and cajoles its way to getting what it wants.

Of course the EU and other governments profess their undying opposition to any such attempt by France to do what it wants. But then the Euro Nabobs will gather and the horse-trading will begin – or should that be fish-trading? This country will want that concession on employment measures; another will want to adjust some measure in the sphere of the environment; yet another will be looking to advance its pet project on some distinctive food that it wants to have granted Appellation d’origine status and before you know it, voila, French Fishing Fleets will be sailing the seven seas of the CFP with its quotas drastically enhanced if not abolished and Nicolas Sarkozy smiling like the cat that has got the cream – and I am not talking of a visit to La Bruni here!

Democratic? No. Fair and Just? No. Transparent? No. But who ever believed all that rubbish which held that the EU was supposed to be democratic, fair, just and transparent in its dealings? And whoever was so naïve as to think that France would not treat the whole EU thing as a large-scale opportunity to advance its interests at each and every turn?

Not I, for sure.