Harlingen has been a fishing port for eight hundred years. The harbour wall, the smell of salt and diesel, the early morning departure of the fleet: these things have defined the town and the people in it across more generations than anyone can count.

The European Union's Common Fisheries Policy has reduced the allowed catch of plaice, sole, and cod in the North Sea and Wadden Sea substantially in recent years. The reductions are justified as conservation measures, and the science behind some of them is sound. But the distribution of pain is not.

Large industrial trawlers receive a disproportionate share of the reduced quotas, while small coastal operations are squeezed out entirely. The boats that have fished these waters for generations cannot compete with vessels that can catch a week's quota in a single day.

Fuel costs rose sharply after 2022 and have not returned to pre-war levels. The margin on a traditional Wadden Sea fishing operation is now so thin that a single bad week can finish a business.

The Frisian coastal community does not want subsidies. It wants a quota system that does not systematically favour the largest operators at the expense of the smallest. It wants decisions about Wadden Sea fisheries to be made by people who have actually seen the Wadden Sea.

That is apparently too much to ask.