Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-01-13-Speech-2-205"
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"en.20040113.10.2-205"2
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".
Madam President, I would ask you not to count what I am going to say first as speaking time because I would like, on behalf of all my colleagues, to make a slight protest at this situation. I know that it is not your fault, Madam President, but this is an irritating situation because the debate was initially scheduled for the morning, then it was changed to the early afternoon and now it has been left for the night, and this often happens to us with fisheries. I would ask that this never happen again because clearly it entirely breaks up the debate. I am going to speak until 5 p.m., and I hope that you will at least allow the rapporteur time to speak properly, because I do not believe the Commissioner will have time to answer me. He will have to do so at 9 p.m. In any event, the members of the Committee on Fisheries believe that this is not good and we hope that it will not happen to us again in the future. Thank you very much.
In view of the globalisation of the tuna market, we are facing very complex issues which require constant and priority attention, as happens in relation to the supply of raw material to the Community industry, and we therefore call for a new study of the real supply needs which allow the Community administration to take the appropriate decisions at all times.
Our report, Commissioner, attempts to help the Commission to act correctly. We are therefore asking for specific things, such as: a specific action plan, a global framework for structural support, a defence plan to deal with third States and, to this end, the creation of units and advisory committees as I just said in my speech. This is therefore our opinion, it is the European Parliament's opinion, and we hope that the European Commission is now sensitive to it and will act accordingly. We in the European Parliament have begun our work and from now on we are going to demand compliance with our requests.
My political group asked for this report because it believes that the Committee on Fisheries should focus all its attention on the study and analysis of certain fisheries, analysing their situation, their functions, their problems and their future. This could be done with various fisheries, but we have decided to begin with tuna fisheries for the simple reason that it is the most globalised species on the planet, both in its extraction and in its processing and marketing. This means that it involves great interests and complex problems at international level.
In the case of tuna there is a very clear inter-relationship between fleet and industry, and the role of the European Union is essential since our market is the world's top market for this species, and our fleet is also the biggest in the world, and tuna represents 60% of total production of canned fish, the European Union currently being – with a production of some 400 000 tonnes of canned tuna – the world’s top producer. This generates a very significant number of jobs – which furthermore is highly localised – in peripheral maritime regions highly dependent on fisheries. For specific data I would refer you to my report.
Our intention is to provide a technical and political consideration of the whole of the sector, both extractive and processing, to analyse its position within the European Union and the world in order to draw conclusions which we can deliver to the Commission and the Council in order to increase awareness and sensitivity towards this important industry and finally to propose a series of specific measures to improve its defence.
We have begun by defining the species the report is directed at, focusing essentially on tropical tuna, which constitute 90% of what is processed by the canning industry. We call for the defence of sustainable and responsible fishing, as the very basis for its future. We defend fishing which is respectful of other species, such as dolphins. We therefore support the
labelling of the AIDCP, the intergovernmental body which includes the European Union amongst its members; we call for transparency and clarity for consumers; we condemn illegal fishing – IUU – the flags of convenience which shelter it and we support the regional fisheries organisations and the Commission's role in them, we propose the creation of other new ones and we also request the maintenance and extension of the network of international tuna fishing agreements, given the highly migratory nature of these species and the guarantee that these international fisheries agreements represent for responsible fishing in the face of private agreements.
I believe that the consensus reached in the Committee on Fisheries, in which the rapporteur accepted amendments from all political groups and proposed specific compromises, which have been incorporated, as in the case of the support for the amendments from the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance, demonstrate our genuine interest in supporting fisheries which must be sustainable both ecologically and economically and socially. I thank all the Members for their cooperation.
To greatly summarise the contents of the report, we are calling for assistance for the Community fleet to prevent it from losing competitiveness in the globalised tuna world and we advocate a specific register for this fleet which will not receive aid from a structural point of view following the reform of the fisheries policy. It should be given incentives to retain the Community flags in the face of the temptation to take flags of convenience; that a census be created, authorised by the respective RFOs, and that illegal fishing and landings by these fleets be effectively controlled in order to put an end to unfair competition.
To this end, we are calling for a specific unit within the Fisheries DG on highly migratory species with adequate resources and personnel to defend European interests in these fora at all times. We also call on the Commission to create a specific Advisory Committee on tropical tuna.
With regard to our important canning industry, we are calling for a stable legal framework which allows it to better plan its activity and safeguard its investments. And we call for the same requirements for the Community industry as for the industries which export its product to our markets in order that we may compete under equal conditions within a very liberalised Community market which is continuing to open up with concessions to third countries, in particular in South East Asia. To this end we also call for the creation of a network of European reference laboratories in order to control the quality of products and technical and sanitary conditions, to which the European Union’s strict rules on the origin of goods must be applied."@en1
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"Dolphin-Safe"1
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