Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-11-18-Speech-1-138"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20021118.7.1-138"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spoken text |
". – Madam President, thank you for extending the debate to give me a chance to get here and participate. It took me 16 hours to travel here to Strasbourg today. Two weeks ago I went to Hobart in Tasmania in less time than it takes to get to Strasbourg. When I find out that part of the reason for the delay is reindeer running on the runway of the international airport in Strasbourg, I find that utterly incredible.
Firstly, I understand that during the debate a great deal of concern has been expressed about the wreck of the
off the coast of Galicia. I hope that from what has been said in this debate my colleagues will agree with me that we should be calling for the Commission and the EU institutions to take all possible steps to aid Galicia in dealing with this horrendous problem. The newspapers in Scotland today were calling it the ‘Costa del muerte’ and saying that 3 000 tonnes of oil had already been spilled. I understand that the tanker contained 70 000 tonnes of oil and the idea of a spillage on that scale is absolutely horrifying.
We are dealing here with a debate in which you have heard Mr Parish expressing a great deal of anger. You have heard Mr Hudghton also expressing anger from a Scottish perspective. Part of this debate deals with the Commission's roadmap. I should say at the outset that the recent scientific advice from ICES, which recommends the complete closure of the whitefish sector in the UK and Ireland, points to the fact that to have a roadmap is superfluous. As far as the common fisheries policy is concerned we are on the road to nowhere. What is the use of debating future fisheries policy in this Chamber tonight if for British and Irish fishermen there is no future? What is the point of discussing multi-annual management plans if tax and quotas in the North Sea, the west of Scotland, the Irish Sea and the Kattegat are to be set at zero for at least the next five years? What an indictment of the common fisheries policy! What a sorry state of affairs that after 20 years of failed policies we are now looking at the destruction of an industry that is as old as mankind itself. In the name of conservation our fishermen have been forced to dump millions of tonnes of prime fish back into the sea dead to comply with the lunatic quota scheme. In the name of conservation our fishermen have suffered tie-ups, lay-offs, emergency closures, decommissioning, job losses and plunging incomes and now the message from the scientists appears to be that everything they have advised in the past has failed – all the technical conservation measures, all the increased mesh sizes, the square mesh panels to allow young cod to escape, all the emergency closures of cod spawning grounds, the 40 000 square miles of the North Sea closed for 12 weeks last year without one penny of compensation paid to the fishermen, the three years in a row that the Irish Sea has been closed for cod fishing, the massive decommissioning round that took over 100 demersal vessels out of the Scottish fleet alone. All of these measures recommended by the scientists and ordered by the Commission have apparently failed. It beggars belief.
There is no place in the common fisheries policy for our roadmap if 20 000 fishermen, fish processors and harbour workers are facing the closure of their industry and the loss of their jobs. There is no justification for closing the whole whitefish sector. Seven hundred thousand tonnes of cod were caught in the Northeast Atlantic last year. That does not sound like a species on the verge of collapse. Tens of thousands of big mature cod are being caught around the Faroes and Iceland where they have no CFP. If the cod have migrated northwards due to global warming, pollution or the North Atlantic drift, then no amount of draconian measures will make them return. It is true the cod have gone from the central part of the North Sea. Nobody is disputing that. But their place has been taken by prawns, now one of the biggest fisheries around the British Isles. We know that cod is a key predator of prawns so it is not surprising that when the cod decline the prawns thrive. But it is also a fact that prawns feed on cod larvae, so once the cod have gone they may never return. That has certainly been the case in Canada.
I do not accept that the possible recovery of cod stocks is in any way an adequate justification for the sacrifice of the prawn, haddock, whiting, plaice, and flatfish fisheries. Nor do I accept that there are anything like sufficient funds in the budget to even meet a fraction of the likely socio-economic impact costs which this catastrophic proposal implies. So there is no point in discussing a roadmap tonight."@en1
|
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples