When Emma Bonino's Euro~fish juggernaut leaves Brussels on Thursday at the start of a six-month trip round Europe, it will be a momentous event in the history of the sardine. It will also be another great coup for the Bonino self-publicity machine.

; Painted in European Union colours, adorned with pictures of leaping fish and packed with tins of sardines to be handed out by Euro. fish hostesses, the Bonino wagon will visit London, Lisbon, Barcelona, Rome, Athens, Helsinki and Amsterdam at a cost to the EU tax. payer of £1 4 million.

The campaign - principally 'aimed at promoting what the sparky Italian commissioner for consumer affaire and fisheries calls ''lese noble" fish species (the sardine, the sprat and the horse mackerel) is, she insists, no joke.

Indeed, so serious is Ms Bonino about it that she had intended to drive the juggernaut herself. That bad to be scrapped when she found she needed a heavy goods licence,

But small setbacks do not deter Europe's.most energetic commissioner. Spurred on by a love of headlines and a determination to wean consumer off endangered species such as cod and haddock, Ms Bonino saw the juggernaut (which was her own idea) as an appropriate use of EU funds.

"I don't think the money involved is a lot between 15 member states . . . For me there is a need to go to talk to the people," sbe said yesterday. "The idea is not only to show that fish like sardines are

healthy and safe but to explain the Common Fisheries Policy.''

Nobody had dared point out to her "except one or two in the corridor" that it might seem a little odd for a chain-smoker who believes in liberalising soft drugs and cats so erratically that she collapsed during a recent fisheries council, to suddenly turn health campaigner.

Bonino stunts such as the fish juggernaut inspire envy, irritation and admiration among colleagues

and rivals in the European Com. mission. Some condemn her as a self-publicist whose efforts to popularise the European project will only cheapen it in the mina of the EU citizen.

The unconventional Ms Bonino a leading light from the Italian Radical Party who once spent time in custody in Italy for setting up an abortion clinic without authority is now unquestioned queen of an otherwise characterless European Commission.. ..

After the beef,crisis had uncovered failings in the way the Commission reacted in the late 1980s and early l990s, Jacques Santer, its president, hand~picked Ms Bonino to head a powerful new food safety unit in Brussels. His most industrious commissioner added this to her lengthy list of duties, which include consumer affairs and aid.

Mr Salter had been impressed by the way she had preached the need for fleet reductions to British fishermen confronting them in ports such as Peterhead and Grimsby .

Ms Bonino will be at the centre of this dispute again today when EU fishery ministers meet in Luxembourg to discuss her plans for cuts of.at least 30 per cent in fleet sizes.

David Brown, Fisheries Editor writes: Tony Baldry, the Fisheries Minister, will tell counterparts in Luxembourg today that the Government has no intention of acting on Ms Bonino conservation plans which are likely to be approved despite his opposition while Spanish fishermen are