Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-01-30-Speech-3-279"
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"en.20080130.23.3-279"2
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". −
Madam President, I am grateful to the shadow rapporteur for helping us to end with a good report. I also want to thank Commissioner Borg for at last – at last! – proposing powerful measures to deal with the discarding of fish and unwanted by-catches.
Today we have a fisheries policy which is emptying the world’s oceans, ravaging seabeds, destroying ecosystems and causing fish stocks to collapse. Even seabirds are killed by our current fisheries policy. If this destruction had taken place on land – if we had treated our forests in the same way as we are now treating the seas – we would have had rioting on the streets, but the destruction of the oceans is happening out of sight and in silence. Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring, had a powerful impact in 1962 and was a wake-up call for many to become committed to caring for the environment and to nature conservation. We are now in the time of the Silent Sea. In fact, last year, the journalist Isabella Lövin published a book with that very title. Let us now put some life into the fight to rescue future generations of fish and fishermen.
The Commission’s proposals will in fact mean an end to quota systems and detailed regulation, which have in practice encouraged fishermen to empty the seas and throw back unprofitable fish dead, and under which the development of fishing equipment was aimed mainly at taking more and more from the seas. Faced with the threat of having to fill their vessels with unprofitable fish, fishermen in the EU are getting an incentive to fish more selectively.
But a successful policy needs carrots as well as sticks. We can, for example, allow more fishing days for vessels with selective gear, or give them access to areas which are closed to vessels without selective fishing gear.
It is important, for each type of fishery, to set annual reduction targets for by-catches and discards and to have a dialogue with interested parties in order to achieve best results. Positive examples are the Bay of Biscay, the Kattegat and the Skagerrak. In those areas French and Swedish fishermen have used sorting grids with great success in the Norway lobster (
) fishery. These have in practice completely eliminated by-catches.
With a little more freedom and accountability for the fishing fleet, perhaps cooperation can grow between the research community and fishermen, and that can lead to positive development. This goes together with better data on what fish are caught. We need to look at systems using electronic logbooks and possible video surveillance to see whether we can devise a good solution for maintaining personal integrity.
Another important aspect is what we are to do with fish landed in the form of by-catches when there is a ban on discards. It is important that it should be possible to use it in some way but at the same time that the level of compensation should be so low that it does not provide an incentive actively to seek by-catches.
I hope and believe that the Commission will quickly finalise a proposal that can be implemented. It would then become an important element in the fight against overfishing and in achieving a sustainable fishery. But of course that is not enough – we also need general reductions in fishing effort where currently endangered species are concerned, but perhaps we shall be able to debate that another day."@en1
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