Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-10-23-Speech-4-009"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20031023.1.4-009"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr President, the Group of the Party of European Socialists is glad that finally the Commission, in accordance with Parliament’s request, is presenting a specific recovery plan for cod, separate from the recovery plan for hake, since, as we have always maintained, the situations of the respective stocks differ considerably.
As the rapporteur, Mrs Stihler, points out, for three years the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea has been saying that the cod populations in the North Sea and off the west of Scotland are in serious danger of total collapse.
The Socialist Group calls on the Commission to promote the best possible scientific opinions in order to provide knowledge at all times of the state of each resource in each fishing ground so that, on the basis of these rigorous scientific opinions, we can implement recovery plans, which may or may not involve drastic measures which – we must not forget – always lead to the scrapping of ships, unemployment for fishermen and other workers dependent on the fishing sector, and furthermore represent a serious blow for those European regions most dependent on fishing.
We therefore believe that the precautionary approach must be a residual criterion to be taken into account only when reliable and safe scientific opinions are not available, but under no circumstances must it replace these scientific opinions.
The fishing communities, as Mr Stevenson said a moment ago, demand a clear position, on the part of both the Commission and Parliament, in favour of prior, safe and well-founded scientific opinions, which take account of the sector’s opinions and which, as well as the state of resources, calculate and evaluate the socio-economic consequences of the conservation measures, and we have been asking the Commission for this for a long time.
Over-fishing is a determining factor, but it is not the only cause of the problem of scarcity of resources. Knowing the causes is essential if we want the recovery plans – this plan for cod and other future ones – to achieve their objectives, since if we restrict ourselves to reducing catches without tackling causes other than over-fishing – and I would mention the disruption of the food chain or sea pollution – we will perhaps find that the years will have passed and fish populations will not have increased.
We need to ascertain the effects on the cod populations in the Irish Sea and the North Sea of the extraction of more than a million tonnes of fish of species other than cod, but which are, however, a source of food for cod. We also need to know the impact of industrial fishing on other populations of white fish, because that may perhaps provide the key to explaining the decline of cod and hake. We want the Commission to investigate the causes of this collapse of the species. We support the idea of a recovery plan which makes it possible to re-establish the stock and my group therefore supports the idea that the highest annual change, upwards or downwards, in any total allowable catch (TAC), should not exceed 15% after the first year of application of the recovery plan."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples