Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-11-22-Speech-1-111"
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"en.20101122.16.1-111"2
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"Mr President, I would firstly like to acknowledge, thank and congratulate the inshore fishing sector of the Bay of Biscay for its responsible behaviour.
The second amendment refers to the inclusion of live bait in the TAC. It would be a mistake to count it as part of the caught quota.
Finally, the third amendment refers to the review of catches.
If the Scientific Committee is unable to produce an estimate of the current biomass because it lacks sufficient information, the sector must not be doubly penalised with a 25% reduction of the TAC on the previous year. The Commission had already considered it more appropriate in this case to reduce the TAC by 10%, in no event less than 7 000 tonnes. As regards the powers of this institution, they have been consistently disregarded by the Council and the Commission. The fact that even as we are debating this initiative, we have heard unofficial news that the Council has requested its withdrawal, gives a clear indication of its attitude.
Is this true? I am asking you now, Commissioner. Why? What do you intend to do? I would like an answer today. I would also like the Belgian Presidency to tell me why it has requested the withdrawal of the initiative. I would like some clear answers on these issues. We have been working for 14 months and all we have is confusion.
The actions of the Council and the Commission are damaging the credibility of the European institutions in the eyes of a sector that is tired of this way of doing things and needs solutions.
Strengthen your credibility in this sector! Or at least win back the credibility you have lost since September 2009!
Parliament is determined to exercise the codecision powers conferred on it by the Treaty of Lisbon. You must respect them. Your actions do not match up to 21st century leadership. Our guiding principles have been transparency and participation. Please adopt these principles. This is how the European project must move forward.
Commissioner, the sector urgently needs this plan if it is to achieve its objective, namely, to carry on a profitable activity without jeopardising the future of the fishing ground. This requires maintaining anchovy stocks in the Bay of Biscay at a level that allows for sustainable exploitation in economic, environmental and social terms. This can be done much more effectively by calculating yields on the basis of scientific reports rather than allowing total allowable catch (TAC) calculations to become subject to obscure political negotiations.
The rules of exploitation must therefore be addressed in the plan, and this means that fishing quotas must be established on the basis of stock estimations obtained from scientific reports.
Commissioner, this initiative was tabled by the Commission in July 2009. We started working in September. We established a work procedure together with the entire Spanish and French sectors represented by fishermen’s organisations, scientific institutes and the South Western Waters Regional Advisory Council. Following this method, we worked on a joint proposal that received broad support in Parliament.
Having achieved a high level of consensus and being conscious of the impending entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon and the uncertainty surrounding how it should be applied to cases that were already open, on 30 November, we held an indicative vote in the Committee on Fisheries. This open and inclusive approach has run up against a very different attitude on the part of the Council and the Commission.
For a start, we learnt in the course of our work that a control regulation was being prepared which would affect this report, although we only received limited information on this matter. This plunged us into uncertainty in a way that could quite easily have been avoided. Following the vote in the Committee on Fisheries and during the Spanish Presidency, I negotiated the initiative with the Council. We decided to call a trialogue meeting but, to our surprise, on the same day of the meeting, the Spanish Presidency unexpectedly announced to us that, at the request of the French Government, the Spanish Government had decided to postpone the issue as it was unsure about its legal basis. After months of work, we had stalemate. The Spanish Presidency had no agreement and no possibility of a trialogue.
I asked the new Presidency whether it was willing to continue negotiations. They told me not to be impatient, not to hurry. In view of the Council’s utter unwillingness to move forward, we took a new vote, following advice from legal services.
In this second vote, three amendments were rejected which had been adopted in the indicative vote and which were of crucial importance to the sector.
The first one relates to exploitation rates and proposes 0.4 as a more appropriate rate."@en1
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