Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-01-19-Speech-3-172"
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"en.20000119.7.3-172"2
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"Mr President, the Portuguese Presidency is extremely anxious to give a comprehensive answer to this question, particularly because it broaches an issue which concerns Portugal in a positive way, and I shall explain how.
The Council is aware of the critical level of anchovy stocks in the Bay of Biscay to which Mr Ortuondo Larrea refers. Nevertheless, at the last Fisheries Council of 1999, held on 16 and 17 December, the Member States involved in this area of fishing, namely France, Spain and Portugal, considered that applying the precautionary principle which sets a TAC reduced from 5 000 tonnes to 2 000 tonnes, as the Commission proposed, was excessively cautious. A compromise solution was therefore reached in order to achieve a balance between the need to reduce the biological risks, that is the species of fish being affected, and the socio-economic problems caused by fishing limits. This was achieved by fixing the TAC at an intermediate level of 16 000 tonnes instead of the 33 000 set in 1999. It was also stipulated that this would be revised in the light of new scientific information on preserving species, of which we hope to see examples in the first six months of this year.
As for the Southern stocks of anchovy in ICES zone IX, the TAC was fixed at 10 000 tonnes for the whole of 2000 as opposed to 13 000 tonnes in 1999. Fishing quota transfers between Portugal and France were reduced proportionally from 5 008 tonnes in 1999 to 3 000 tonnes in 2000, for fishing in French waters.
I would like to state that this transfer will not increase the pressure of fishing on anchovy stocks overall, over the whole Community fishing area. In accordance with the principle of relative stability, 90% of stocks of anchovy in the Bay of Biscay are allocated to Spain and only 10% to France.
Without this transfer from Portuguese waters, the level of the Bay of Biscay TAC would have to be multiplied by ten in order to grant adequate catches to France. That is why I think that this is quite positive from Portugal’s point of view. This situation would obviously be even more damaging to the level of stocks than the risk referred to by Mr Ortuondo Larrea, which we also understand."@en1
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