Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-06-19-Speech-4-023"
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"en.20030619.2.4-023"2
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"Mr President, I apologise for being a bit croaky. I have made so many speeches over the last week I am losing my voice, although some people would regard that as a blessing.
First of all I congratulate Giorgio Lisi for his excellent report. Embracing the Mediterranean within the controls and regulations of the common fisheries policy is a very ambitious plan and one which I hope will secure the core objectives of conservation and sustainability.
However, to do so we first must learn the lesson from past failures of the common fisheries policy. We do not need to search far for these failures: for the past year we have been dealing with crisis after crisis. The Commission itself, in the opening lines of its CFP reform document, acknowledges that the policy has been deeply flawed. Where the main objective of the CFP has been to sustain employment in the sector and to sustain fish stocks we have failed miserably on both counts. We are now dealing with estimated job losses in excess of 40 000 around the North Sea alone, with hundreds of fishermen leaving the industry and scrapping their vessels, and fish stocks across the major whitefish species showing signs of imminent collapse.
The reasons for these problems are of course manifold: overfishing has indeed played its part, but so have environmental pollution, global warming, North Atlantic drift, and many other factors. However, the strict regime of TACs and quotas has itself exacerbated the problem of discards, with over 25% of healthy fish being thrown dead back into the sea every year. A Commission official told our committee last week that an estimated 150 000 tonnes of fresh healthy haddock were dumped dead back into the North Sea last year. This is an utter tragedy and completely unsustainable.
Similarly, the problems of illegal fishing – black fish landings – have made the situation even worse. We must not allow these problems to be imported into the Mediterranean under the CFP.
Of course, we have an initial difficulty – and a very large one at that – because the majority of countries fishing in the Mediterranean are not EU Member States, so we must seek their active cooperation in achieving our conservation and sustainable exploitation objectives. It would be untenable to impose a strict regime of regulations and controls on our own fleet while allowing vessels from other nations to plunder the seas unhindered. The very nature of the fishing sector around the Mediterranean is unique: few people realise for example that the Italian fleet is the second largest in the EU, with over 17 000 vessels. 98% of these, however, are under 12 metres in length, which means the main fishery is being prosecuted in inshore waters and is of a largely artisanal nature. Many of these craft are old and are becoming increasingly unsafe, so we need to look at the modernisation of these vessels on health and safety grounds alone.
I also welcome the recommendations from Mr Lisi that we should closely monitor leisure fishing. This is an increasingly important area and it provides many jobs in the tourist sector, the value of which we cannot underestimate. It would be ludicrous, however, to ignore the impact such activities have on the fisheries sector and on fish stocks.
Finally, I am very much in favour of the multilateral approach to fisheries management in the Mediterranean in future. This is the only way in which we can involve all of the actors and stakeholders in the formulation of sensible management proposals for a sustainable Mediterranean fishery."@en1
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