From the always excellent Christopher Booker in the Sunday Telegraph ( free reg req ) :

The train to absurdity

I am delighted to report that, as new members of the EU, Malta and Cyprus have won the right to nominate lavishly-paid members of the EU’s new Railways Agency, set up to oversee the running of all the EU’s railways, even though neither of these small countries actually has any railways.

This is no more absurd than the fact that UK fisheries ministers must sign “designation orders” permitting Luxembourg and Austria access to Britain’s fishing waters, containing four-fifths of all Europe’s fish, and that the ministers of these two landlocked countries help to decide the Common Fisheries Policy, even though between them they do not have a single fishing boat.

What can one add to that ?