Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-06-09-Speech-4-011"
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"en.20050609.5.4-011"2
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".
Mr President, through this report, for which it has been my pleasure to be rapporteur, we finally have the opportunity to produce a fisheries management system for the Mediterranean, eleven years after the first attempt to impose order by means of the technical measures regulation, Regulation No 1696/94.
Nevertheless, if within a period of one year, these international bodies do not achieve a common rule, the Commission will be empowered to present a new proposal, since we do not want to ignore our responsibilities, stemming from our strong presence in the fishing grounds.
With regard to the content of the report, I would finally like to stress the effort to provide greater protection for species by means of minimum sizes, with the only temporary exception of hake, where we worked on the basis of a Commission proposal to lower the size to 15 cm — which we have maintained until 2007, when the traditional size of 20 cm will return, coinciding with the proposed increase in mesh.
Furthermore, for the first time, the size of sardine is regulated, sizes that had disappeared from the Commission’s proposal are recovered, such as the size of clam or striped venus, and reasonable increases in size are introduced for other species, since the ultimate objective is to move closer to the scientific recommendations in the Mediterranean as well.
Mr President, having once again called upon this House to approve this report and, in particular, the compromise reached with the Commission, I shall end by expressing my hope that the Council will fully accept this new proposal, which is the result of this compromise between the European Commission and the European Parliament.
This is therefore a crucial moment for the fisheries sector in the area, and for having made it possible for us to reach this moment, I must fully acknowledge the work of Commissioner Joe Borg and Director-General Jörgen Holmquist — who have been personally involved in moving this dossier forward — their services, with whom I have worked on a daily basis, and of course my colleagues in the Committee on Fisheries, who have been wise and generous enough to give up many of their local sectors’ demands, sometimes despite strong pressure, in order not to deprive the whole Mediterranean sector of common management rules.
With everybody’s involvement, we have been able to unblock the Commission’s initial proposal which, perhaps because it was drawn up too quickly, had opened up apparently insoluble conflicts with the national administrations, with the sector and with this Parliament, which, as you will remember, rejected the proposal by means of the report by Mr Lisi.
In order to get out of this
I proposed to the Commission that we work in unison on a common text on the points on which there was the greatest controversy, with a view to achieving a joint compromise acceptable to Parliament and the Commission which we would then present once again to the Council of Ministers. The Commission accepted this method and, following a very hard negotiation and almost a year’s work, this is what we are presenting to the House today for its approval.
It may not be as ambitious a text as many of us would have liked; perhaps no one got everything they wanted. But we have all lost a little so that we may all emerge winners, because, if there was one thing we all agreed upon, it was that the situation of fishing in the Mediterranean could not remain at the mercy of a minimal regulation, which complicated more than it resolved.
If politics is a question of sacrificing individual interests for the sake of the common good, I believe that we can feel satisfied with our work on approving this report, which demonstrates that, when we work together, it is easier to make progress, and also that when a text that is balanced, and agreed amongst everybody, is presented to the governments, it is more easily accepted and therefore easier to apply.
This working method has also allowed us to avoid leaps into the dark with no scientific or logical basis, and certain contradictions in the initial text which led to the outright rejection of the proposal. For example, we introduce rationality and consistency into the regulation of the depths and distances from the coast within which it is possible to fish in such a biologically-, economically- and socially-sensitive sea.
For the first time, dredges are regulated, the way is opened for the use of more selective meshes — such as square mesh for towed nets — and considerable progress is made on bringing mesh size into line with the minimum sizes of species.
Furthermore, with regard to the Commission’s maximal initiative on bans, minimum sizes and hooks for the fishing of highly migratory species, it has been agreed firstly to attempt to get the regional fisheries organisations, such as the GFCM and the ICCAT, to produce these regulations, since this fishing is also carried out in the Mediterranean by third-country fleets and it does not make sense to impose restrictions solely on Community vessels."@en1
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