Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-12-14-Speech-3-303"
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"en.20051214.20.3-303"2
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".
Mr President, the common fisheries policy affects the UK more than many other Member States. A UK minister in the late 1940s once remarked that Britain’s economy was safe for years to come because, he said, we live on an island of coal, surrounded by fish. The coal is still there, if we care to use it, but the fish have almost gone, due to the disaster that is common fisheries policy.
Designed to conserve fish stocks, this misbegotten scheme has reduced some species to near extinction. Among the most depleted are the plentiful stocks once found in the North Sea and Irish Box, up until 1973 the exclusive province of British fishermen who looked after the fishing grounds and reaped a rich harvest. Then we joined the common market and the CFP, and now these seas are a marine desert in the making, if not already so.
Fair shares for all under the CFP, do I hear? If so, why does Britain have lower quotas in the waters around our shores than some other countries from further afield? And what does it profit anyone to fish our waters out? Too many boats taking too few fish is the cry. Just so. Under the CFP vast fleets of trawlers from countries previously excluded are rapaciously fishing these grounds to extinction, while fertiliser factory ships vacuum up vast quantities of marine life on the seabed, destroying the bottom of the food chain.
How could any sane person devise the CFP scheme of quotas resulting in fish caught in excess being thrown back? Do you not know that the discarded fish are dead when they are thrown back? Do you not know that for some species the annual weight of useless discards is as much as the weight of the fish legally landed? Compare that to Norway and Iceland who both refused to join the EU: their fish stocks remain plentiful and their fishing industries flourish because they look after them, forbidding discards. Meanwhile, the British fishing fleet has sunk to less than a quarter of its previous size.
Destruction of the fishing industry means that the fishermen are out of work and on benefit. It means that fishing ports are in terminal decline, so structural funds are poured in. It means that the social and economic fabric around the ports declines, while the EU claims to be combating this particular misery.
If you think this is a purely British complaint, think again. The fishing industry is a factor in the UK’s GDP to which contributions to the EU budget are geared, and that comes on top of the destruction of a priceless natural resource. And so, another Christmas goose reduces its output of golden eggs!"@en1
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