Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-12-14-Speech-3-305"
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"en.20051214.20.3-305"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, fishing – just like agriculture – is not an economic sector like any other. Fishing contributes to improving quality of life at European level and to protecting the coastline and the environment. In many cases, small-scale fishing even helps to bolster tourism.
It is worth emphasising that the fishing community plays an important role. The job they do with such passion is demanding, tough and dangerous and their income is dependent on too many uncertainties. Often in debt, and subject to the continually rising price of diesel, fishermen and their families live with the fear of not being able to make ends meet and of losing their jobs.
Throughout its existence, the common fisheries policy has failed to relieve their fears. On the contrary, it has contributed to the loss of thousands of small-scale fishing jobs and to the social insecurity of fishermen, without achieving convincing results with respect to the conservation of resources. What is worse, this policy has often given the impression of being subject to the law of the lobbies, who are more interested in cultivating their media images and in chasing subsidies than in making a serious effort to protect the environment.
That, Commissioner, is why fishermen are fed up with continually being suspected of being the criminals of the sea, by a European Commission that, in contrast, is far too lenient on the real pirates of the sea, by which I mean flags of convenience. Commissioner, contrary to the prejudices of your learned assembly of scientists, nobody is more committed to conserving fishery resources than fishermen. It is their livelihood, their heritage and the future of their children. They have had more than enough of a situation in which quotas for fishing days and catch sizes, often laid down without a real scientific basis and traded any old how between the States, are involved in establishing fishing zones. The Commission must not continue to favour fishermen of one nationality over those of another. Everyone must be on an equal footing within Europe.
It is true that your text represents a certain amount of progress in the field, in setting as one of its formal objectives the involvement of all stakeholders, but you will forgive me for describing it as vague and timid. We cannot save fishing and fishery resources without the fishermen and their professional associations and trade unions. Fishermen, through their representatives, must be truly involved in all decisions affecting them. The Union must also provide financial aid to the Member States to help them protect their territorial waters against illegal fishing. I am thinking in particular of the territorial waters of the outermost regions of the EU.
Insofar as there is a real problem of funding a fair, sustainable and bold European fisheries policy, we must not forget that one of the threats to resources comes from pollution caused by maritime transport. The system of flags of convenience is behind this pollution. If, therefore, we can point the finger at those responsible for this ongoing ecological disaster, we will be in a position to launch a really ambitious policy."@en1
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