Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-05-29-Speech-3-041"
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"en.20020529.5.3-041"2
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"Mr President, today the Commission is presenting a point of extraordinary political importance, as demonstrated by the tremendous controversy between the Commission and the fisheries sector. The fishermen are complaining that the Commission has not included their opinions in its proposal for a reform, nor has it included the opinions of Parliament on this matter, given in January this year. What is more, this proposal was adopted yesterday by the members of the Commission by simple majority in the absence of four Commissioners, and with no guarantee that it has the necessary qualified majority in the Council.
The Commission is acting outside the sector. A French shipowner told me less than ten minutes ago that the Commission hears but does not listen. Any reform of a basic policy such as fisheries must, in order to be credible, ensure the survival of the sector and an improvement in the living and working conditions of those concerned. The Commission proposals are far from seeking a balance between conservation of stocks, the efficiency of the fleet, maintaining jobs and economic activity in fishing regions.
The Commission does take account of the well-intentioned concerns of environmentalist groups, but puts them before those of the fishing world itself and shamelessly sacrifices basic principles of the European Union, such as economic and social cohesion, in regions that are heavily dependent on fishing, all of which are Objective 1 regions.
We, as socialists, call for the sustainable management of stocks, but we believe that this can only take place if the fishermen are involved. With this plan, stocks will have been replenished within ten years so that Europeans can look at them in a display case, and we shall all be eating imported fish.
The twenty-eight thousand jobs that you are already saying will be lost are only the tip of the iceberg. Fishing generates many more jobs, directly and indirectly, which are not counted in the document presented by the Commissioner. His proposal goes beyond fishing. It concerns a neoliberal reform to scrap boats, which clears the way for a CFP that is neither Community-minded, as it turns its back on European solidarity and increases the North-South divide, nor is it political, as the Commission refuses to exercise its powers, and nor does it have the interests of fisheries at heart as it condemns the sector it is meant to protect, and in particular coastal fishermen, to extinction.
My group, Commissioner, will therefore work in Parliament and the Committee on Fisheries as of today, the day on which we have seen the texts, together with the sector, together with the other groups represented in Parliament, listening to anyone who wants to talk to us to work towards a reform that is gradual, that is established by consensus and that is properly financed, because we believe that a sector of the vital strategic importance of fishing in the European Union cannot be condemned to die out."@en1
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