Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-06-15-Speech-2-636"
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"en.20100615.33.2-636"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I wish to thank the rapporteur, Mrs Ek, for her quite excellent work. The BONUS research programme, which is well worth supporting and an excellent initiative, is an outcome of the EU’s Baltic Sea Strategy.
I also regard the strategy itself as a very major step forward. Around six years ago, enlargement meant that the Baltic Sea, to all intents and purposes, became an internal sea of the EU. People have become aware of this all too slowly. As Mrs Ek said, there has been much research undertaken with respect to the Baltic Sea, but too little coordinated research to establish a knowledge base, for example, to improve EU policies and make them more intelligent.
I hope that coordinated research will help us at least to become aware of two issues. Firstly, the ecological state of the Baltic Sea is alarming. It is one of the world’s most polluted seas. The world’s largest area of seabed devoid of oxygen – in other words, dead – is in the Baltic Sea. It has been said that the largest desert in Europe lies at the bottom of the Baltic Sea.
The other issue that research will hopefully help people to understand better is that it is we ourselves who are to blame for the state of the Baltic Sea. The main problem is eutrophication, the consequences of which the rapporteur also described well. The main source of eutrophying nutrients – nitrogen and phosphorus – is agriculture. It mainly relates to EU agriculture in the Baltic Sea catchment basin.
I therefore hope that jointly-organised coordinated research will help people to become sufficiently aware of all this and that it will also help us to develop better and more intelligent methods and processes in all sectors, but in agriculture especially, because fertilisers that have entered lakes and seas are nothing more than a waste of resources as far as farmers are concerned.
We need to remember, however, that research cannot solve everything. We also have to understand that saving the Baltic Sea will require genuine changes in policy too, mainly in the area of agriculture, but also in other sectors. I hope we will make saving the Baltic Sea, which is now one of the world’s most polluted seas, a success story from which the rest of the world can learn a lesson."@en1
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