FOR years the shipping industry lamented sea blindness among the global political elite. Particularly in Europe, where shipping was more often than not ignored unless it became a pollution problem. Now, amid unprecedented geopolitical challenges, shipping is finally visible and the great powers are scrambling to bolster national interests.

Shipping is once again recognised as a strategic sector. Donald Trump says it is shipbuilding that will make America Great Again.

For the EU, shipping is now intrinsically linked to energy and trade security. And as a byproduct of its resurgent status as a critical industry it is being namechecked in the slew of policies being pushed to light a fire under Europe’s industrial competitiveness amid increasingly hostile challenges from the US and China.

But political plans are easy enough to produce — action, and the financing to enact it, less so.

So is all this political attention a window of opportunity for the industry to capitalise on and secure the conditions it needs to prosper, or is the existential crisis at the heart of Europe going to sink shipping’s prospects inside the world’s largest trading bloc?