Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-06-03-Speech-2-322"
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"en.20030603.10.2-322"2
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". – Mr President, we are well aware in this House that many thousands of fishermen, processors and ancillary workers have suffered severe hardship as a result of the cod recovery proposals agreed by the Council last December. The whitefish fleet in Ireland and the UK in particular have been hardest hit, being forced to tie up their boats for half of every month and having their quotas cut by more than 50% on the days that they can fish. These interim measures have been in place since 1 February this year and yet not a single penny in compensation has been paid to any of those affected by the cuts.
It was salutary to note that Commissioner Fischler himself saw the need to call upon the Member States to live up to their responsibilities and apply for aid from the fisheries budget. He said that of the EUR 3.7 billion in the budget to 2006, only 3% had been earmarked for socio-economic aid, despite the obvious hardship suffered by many fishermen. In fact, in the UK the figure is 0%, which is a shameful indictment of the UK Government. Its failure to apply for this aid or indeed, to submit proposals for emergency aid from the EUR 150 million voted by a huge majority in this House in March, amounts to a naked betrayal of our fishing sector in their time of need.
No wonder more than 230 UK fishermen have applied to scrap their vessels. But decommissioning on such a scale, on top of the 20% who scrapped their vessels last year, could take the UK whitefish fleet below the critical mass needed to support the harbour workers, ancillary staff and processors on whom the remaining fishermen rely. If they go, the whole industry will collapse.
And it is against this background that I must express my surprise at the Commission’s position on the Irish Box. It seems to me to be an utter paradox that the Commission can, on the one hand, support such a draconian regime to enable cod and other whitefish stocks to recover, while at the same time calling for the effective dismantling of the Irish Box.
The Irish Box is one of the most important nursery and spawning grounds in European waters. It is of vital importance as a conservation resource, as numerous scientific studies have demonstrated, and yet the Commission appears ready to accept the argument that restricted access in this zone somehow amounts to discrimination. Let us be quite clear about this. Of course there is restricted access within the Irish Box. That is why it is a conservation zone. But the Irish, British, French and Spanish fleets have been fishing in the Irish Box for years.
Now I am well aware that our Spanish friends are dissatisfied with the current arrangements which restrict access to only 40 of their trawlers. However, it is worth noting that the 40 Spanish trawlers fishing in this zone at any given time are all massive 25-metre plus vessels, often twice the size of local Irish boats. The problem is, there are a further 120 massive Spanish trawlers waiting just south of the Irish Box, keen to gain access, but I do not see hundreds of Greek or Italian trawlers demanding access to the Irish Box!
It is also worth noting that the same proposal for a Council regulation in Western Waters would burst open the 200 mile economic exclusion zone around the Azores. Again this is an area of high sensitivity which has supported generations of local Portuguese fishermen, often braving the wild Atlantic gales in tiny, open wooden boats. Simply to throw these waters open to giant trawlers from Spain or anywhere else would be catastrophic both for conservation of fish stocks and for the preservation of jobs in the fragile Azorean fleet. We cannot allow this to happen.
I support my Spanish colleagues in many ways. I have worked hard to find compensation for the damage caused by the oil tanker
. I have supported the international third-country agreements which are of such benefit and importance to the Andalucian and Galician fleets. But I cannot stand idly by and watch the destruction of key conservation zones around the Azores and in the Irish Box, simply because our Spanish friends and only our Spanish friends wish to catch more fish in these waters.
To accept this argument would be to fly in the face of conservation policy. Our job as parliamentarians, and my job as Chairman of the Committee on Fisheries, is to ensure that fish stocks are allowed to recover. I therefore urge the House to accept the amendments tabled by the UEN Group and others to the Stevenson Report and in particular to support Amendment No 20, which calls upon the Irish Box to be maintained for a period of 10 years, with a review by ICES and STECF at the end of that period, to establish whether the policy of restricted access has assisted in meeting the objectives of the cod recovery plan in rebuilding endangered whitefish stocks."@en1
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