Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-12-14-Speech-3-311"
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"en.20051214.21.3-311"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, there is increasing agreement between scientists, researchers and environmental NGOs that sustainable fishing requires a stable, long-term link between fishermen and their environment, and between this economic activity and controlling and sanctioning predatory practices.
We therefore feel that a European Coast Guard must be set up as a matter of urgent priority, whereby fisheries control would be integrated with other sea control operations and fisheries would be opened up to the entire European fleet; an effective, modern and harmonised system of control and sanction. The liberalisation of access to waters is totally unacceptable unless these requirements are met. Otherwise there can only be one outcome – Europe’s natural maritime heritage will fall into rapid decay.
In her excellent paper on the functioning of a fisheries association in Cangas, in the Spanish region of Galicia, Dora Jesus noted that when that particular fishing community enjoyed exclusive fishing rights in the area, or, more precisely, when it took on the rights and duties of owning natural resources and began to manage its own primary control and sanction systems, it succeeded in recovering stocks of goose barnacle and in making the species ecologically and economically sustainable in the area covered by the association.
Sadly, the EU has opted for a diverse policy, of enormous variations between fishing rights. Europe is exclusively responsible for granting those rights and, for some species, they are determined for virtually the whole of Europe’s sea area, yet control and sanction systems are left to individual discretion.
The funds and take-up rates proposed by the Commission to support investment in fisheries control by the Member States have been cut to EUR 32 million in 2006, a small amount given the responsibilities awarded to some regions and Member States. Furthermore there is no Community assistance for controlling and monitoring the CFP. In this connection, I should point out that Portugal, for example, accounts for little more than 2% of Europe’s population, but over 50% of the area covered by the European Economic Exclusive Zones (EEZs). What is more, the Azores region alone is a bigger EEZ than that of any Member State, even though it only has 250 000 inhabitants.
In this context, the waters off the Azores have only been controlled once since they were liberalised on 1 August 2004, in spite of the fact that many dozens of external vessels have been detected by the Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) in this EEZ during that time, and that there have sometimes been two dozen at once. This is in stark contrast to the numerous inspections carried out on the traditional Azores fleet by the regional, national and Community authorities, on land or not far offshore.
In the absence of any kind of VMS, there is still, as we have just said, no effective protection against unregistered fishing boats and, indeed, legally registered boats, in the poorest and outermost areas of Europe. The reason why the VMS is functioning so incredibly badly is because of a number of derogations from key areas, and because the high-seas control system is so inactive and ineffective.
At a conference on Maritime Policy and European Sea Strategy held last week by the Socialist Group in the European Parliament in Ponta Delgada, we learned that around 150 different species have been found in the waters off the Azores, many of which are native to the area and some of which can live for literally thousands of years. These include dense black coral forests, some more than two metres in height. The value of these corals and other deep-sea organisms to our heritage will be seen over time and it is widely acknowledged that they have huge biotechnological potential. Whilst it is true that bottom trawls and bottom gillnets have been banned in the region, it is difficult to ascertain whether these bans have been effective, when the Community has done little or nothing to monitor, control and protect these European treasures.
The announcement of the Commission’s proposed maritime strategy gave us all hope that we would see some changes in this state of affairs, but to our great dismay we discovered that this proposal envisages zero Community financing. In other words, it advocates the same approach as before, whereby everyone in Europe can enjoy maritime resources, whereas the responsibility for protecting those resources falls entirely on the people who live in the regions in question.
As regards maritime security and environmental protection, in the Azores we are currently facing a tragedy of enormous proportions. A huge container vessel carrying a number of containers with dangerous chemicals, and flying a flag of convenience, has run aground on a reef designated a site of Community interest as part of the Natura 2000 network. In spite of the various packages, in the wake of the
and the
and despite the creation of the European Maritime Safety Agency, Europe still does not have the capacity to respond either to these disasters, or to tragedies arising from unsustainable fishing."@en1
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