Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-02-11-Speech-2-142"
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"en.20030211.6.2-142"2
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". – Mr President, this debate has been slightly livelier than some of us might have anticipated. I would associate myself entirely with Mr Linkohr's remarks in response to Mr Lang, who may be living on the right planet, but it is certainly a different planet to the one I live on. Speaking for the bureaucratic superstate, I should like to respond firstly to Mr Sakellariou on the important point which he raised about the International Criminal Court.
The current dynamism of the artisanal fishing sector in Chile is something all of us should recognise, and it needs to be underlined in debating these matters. This sector is the main supplier of seafood products to the domestic fresh fish market. It currently provides 25% of export income from fisheries products. A significant increase in the artisanal fishing sector has been recorded over the past years, and the interests of the sector have been preserved in the recently adopted fisheries law. If there is to be a loss of artisanal fishing employment in the long term – and this may well happen since artisanal fishing is a highly labour intensive, but not capital intensive business – it would probably occur with or without the agreement we are discussing today.
Without any reservation whatsoever, I commend this agreement to the Chamber. I am sure that the Vice-President of the Commission would also warmly endorse all that we are trying to achieve with this important agreement.
Once again, I wish to thank Mr Salafranca Sánchez-Neyra and his colleagues, Mr Linkohr and others, who have taken such an active interest in this matter. This is a model of this sort of agreement. It is the sort of agreement that will not impoverish the world, that will not bring people the 'joys' of North Korean economics – which some people endorse – but that should make the world a more prosperous place, that should ensure that we better protect our environment and that we have greater political stability than would otherwise be the case.
He will know that Chile participated actively in the preparatory work on the Statute of the International Criminal Court. On 22 January last year the Chilean Chamber of Deputies approved the text with a large majority, but the Senate asked for the opinion of the Constitutional Court in Chile. That court indicated that it was necessary to modify the Chilean constitution before approving the Treaty.
Since modifying the constitution is a lengthy procedure, as it requires a two-thirds majority in Congress, the Treaty cannot yet be ratified. However, ratification of the Treaty remains high on the political agenda of the Chilean Government, since it is entirely consistent with its external policy of promotion of respect for human rights. If there is one country which should understand the arguments for the International Criminal Court, as the honourable Member and I would agree, it is Chile.
He also said that he hoped that as a member of the Security Council the Chilean Government would try to coordinate its response to the crisis in Iraq with European Member States. I hope he does not regard it as
on my part to say that I hope the Member States of the European Union will try to coordinate their policy in the Security Council in dealing with this terrible crisis in Iraq.
There is Article 19 of the Treaty and there is the Maastricht Treaty, but perhaps I should not be drawn down these boulevards. It is interesting that in the Convention we are discussing how much further we can go in coordinating a common foreign and security policy when we are not even using and implementing the provisions of the Maastricht Treaty. In any case, I am using what he said about Chile merely as a trigger to fire off some of my thoughts on this subject.
Several honourable Members raised the question of indigenous peoples, which is always a particularly important issue on these occasions. Difficult as these issues are, the Chilean Government is trying to handle them in a sensitive and democratic way. They have set up a public agency to try to handle some of these challenges. They have taken at least 16 concrete measures to help deal with some of the problems, of which Members have been informed.
My view is that we can help with the efforts that the Chilean Government is already taking through, for example, co-operation projects that are paid for by the funds voted by this Parliament.
On the question of fisheries – and I realise what a controversial issue this can be – I should like to remind Members who have spoken that the association agreement does not include a fisheries agreement, although we would be interested in concluding one. There is the protocol, which has been referred to. Community fishing companies will be allowed to own up to 100% of Chilean fishing companies. However, that is under exactly the same conditions as Chilean investors. That implies that they will have to respect, for example, the catch quotas defined in Chilean laws. There is an elaborate regulatory framework in Chile to address the issue of stock depletion since a serious decline in catch levels of certain species, mostly due to over-fishing, was registered toward the end of the 1990s. It is not right to say that the implementation of the agreement will lead to over-exploitation of fishing resources."@en1
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