Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-07-03-Speech-3-337"
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"en.20020703.12.3-337"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the two reports which are the subject of this debate both deal with the implementation of the common fisheries policy. I greatly welcome the fact that you, Mr Busk, and the Committee on Fisheries support the Commission's report on the monitoring of the implementation of the common fisheries policy.
We all agree that controls and the enforcement of the legislation are key themes in the common fisheries policy. However, the improvements made by the Member States in their systems of monitoring and enforcement are still very patchy, and so the fishermen quite rightly feel that they are treated unequally in different parts of the Community. Within the Member States, there is unequal competition, and there are wide variations in Member States' sanction procedures.
We have followed Parliament's debate on this report very closely, and I note your recommendations. During the second half of this year, I will be submitting to the Commission an Action Plan for more cooperation in control and enforcement and on common fisheries inspection. The purpose of this Action Plan, as well as achieving more effective monitoring and enforcement, is primarily to ensure more uniform implementation of the common fisheries policy.
In your report, you call for a list of sanctions to be drawn up. The Commission welcomes this. Your suggestion is based on the proposals on the reform of the common fisheries policy. As soon these are adopted, we will submit such a list to Parliament and to the Council.
As regards Mrs Attwooll's report, I would like to express my thanks for her positive statement on our communication. Mrs Attwooll, your words clearly show that Parliament and the Commission are pulling together on the issue of a standard procedure to deal with infringements and on the call for uniform sanctions.
The purpose of our communication was to compare, in a transparent way, how the provisions of the common fisheries policy are adhered to and what procedures are adopted in the event of infringements. Such infringements include, for example, non-compliance with the licence provisions, permitted fishing equipment, or the issue of landing and controls. When drawing up our first communication, we faced a number of fundamental problems: firstly, the majority of Member States submitted their data far too late and not in the required format, which made computer processing far more difficult.
Secondly, one Member State, namely France, initially preferred not to submit any data at all. Thirdly, some of the information submitted by some Member States was incomplete.
Today, I can put on record that all Member States have now come into line with the stipulations of Commission Regulation 2740/99. However, the approach that was initially adopted naturally makes a comparison of the situations in the Member States very difficult. Nonetheless, based on the information submitted to us, we can draw the following conclusions: firstly, the majority of infringements relate to fishing without a fishing licence for a specific zone. Secondly, in some Member States, infringements are prosecuted under criminal law, whereas in others, they are dealt with solely by administrative means. Thirdly, there are major differences in the penalties imposed by the various Member States. Often, the penalties are simply not designed to be a deterrent.
We have therefore put forward targeted proposals as part of the reform of the CFP. We need uniform regulations on the enforcement of the common fisheries policy. The sanctions must be effective and must also be such as to deprive the transgressor of the profit accrued through the infringement, and we need measures to prevent repeated and serious violations. Furthermore, when we drafted the communication on infringements brought to light in 2001, the majority of Member States did not submit their reports on time on that occasion either. For this reason, the Commission was itself unable to adhere to the deadline for the second communication, namely 1 June 2002. The call for Parliament to be informed in future by 15 April if Member States fail to comply with their reporting duty is something that I gladly support. I hope that we can pursue this approach so that the public finds out which Member States are meeting their responsibilities, and which are failing to do so."@en1
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