A port is a stock of physical capacity and a set of rules about who may use it. European rearmament has concentrated almost entirely on the first. Channels have been deepened, quays rebuilt, terminals laid out and cranes bought, and the money has been traced with unusual precision because public banks and Union programmes leave audit trails. The second has attracted far less attention, partly because it is unglamorous and partly because it only matters on the days when two users want the same berth. Esbjerg, on the Danish North Sea coast, is the clearest case in Europe of the gap between the two. It is simultaneously the country’s designated gateway for receiving allied ground forces and one of the continent’s principal offshore wind logistics hubs, and it has been enlarged for both purposes with the same money at the same time. The question that follows is not whether the capacity exists. It plainly does, and its cost is documented to the euro. The question is what happens on the morning when a reinforcement movement and a commercial commitment both require the same quay, the same marshalling area or the same crane, and who carries the cost of whichever one gives way. That question has an answer in Danish law, another in a proposed European regulation, and none at all in any instrument that applies to this particular port.