Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-27-Speech-5-010"
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"en.20001027.1.5-010"2
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"Mr President, we had a similar debate a year ago and the fact that it has taken a year before negotiations even get under way shows how difficult it is becoming to find fish stocks for our massive EU fleets to exploit.
The EU is ever more dependent upon the goodwill of other countries to let us fish. We knew five years ago this situation would arise. When Morocco signed the last agreement, it said it did not want another agreement of the same type and it has kept to that position.
In the five years, what has the Community done? It adopted a multiannual guidance plan which was far weaker than what was recommended by the scientists and the Commission. The Commission recently highlighted the implications of this. Then it adopted a structural fund, which will continue to pay for new vessels and the enlargement of existing ones, albeit with some controls. Yet, once again, the Council watered down what the Commission had bravely proposed. Consequently we are left with a problem of excess capacity and dwindling fish stocks. There will need to be further cuts in TACs this Christmas. The Commission is forced to look further and further afield to find fish.
The Moroccan case is a special situation in that many of the vessels involved are relatively small and fishing close to home. We agree that the lack of this agreement has had a severe impact. But while we have plenty of vessels that cannot find fish in European waters, or even in areas where they have traditionally fished, at the same time we have some businessmen, or even business conglomerates, in northern European countries that are building enormous new vessels, which will be forced to depend on fishing far away from Europe.
Given the difficulties in accommodating these vessels in the normal agreements, their owners are making private agreements with the governments of third countries. Since these are private agreements with no Community involvement, there is no transparency, no access to information, no public accountability. This is a very serious situation. Who is to control these vessels?
I would like the Commissioner to give us a detailed account of its activities and their impact. We will support the resolution, but we have to make it clear that nobody has any given right to exploit the resources of another country if it does not so wish. That should be taken into account. We must look at solving our own problem here."@en1
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