Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-06-09-Speech-4-034"
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"en.20050609.6.4-034"2
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". – Mr President, as well as questioning the legitimacy of the EU entering into the International Dolphin Conservation Programme instead of individual States, I would also question whether the EU can be trusted to make the right judgment. Let us consider the facts.
The EU is the body whose common fisheries policy has created massive iniquities. Take the unfair treatment of United Kingdom fishermen, now, thanks to Brussels, struggling to survive, while Spanish fishermen, for example, seem able to flout the rules at will. Consider, too, the appalling depletion of fish stocks in EU waters as a direct result of the CFP. Then there is the fact that one million tonnes of dead fish are thrown back into the North Sea every year. Not only is it hugely wasteful, it is also damaging the ecosystem. Evidence, indeed, of the law of unintended consequences.
The EU has also concluded unfair and immoral fishing agreements with many third world countries in Africa, which allow European factory farming boats, not unlike the ones that pose a threat to dolphins, to come down and plunder African seas of all their fish. So badly has that hit the local economies that local fishermen have now turned to hunting in their hinterland, destroying local wild animal stocks. These debt-ridden countries have little option but to accept grossly inadequate sums of money for this presumed privilege. It is therefore no surprise to me to see the EU attempt to sign up to an agreement that has been condemned by dolphin conservationists. Why, after all, should the EU listen to experts?
Vessels participating in this programme are allowed a dolphin mortality limit. Explosives and speedboats are commonly used to scare dolphins and the programme even allows the deliberate killing of these animals, with over 1 400 observed dead last year, according to the Earth Island Institute’s ‘Dolphin Safe’ programme. If the EU were genuine about this sort of issue, it would adopt the position taken by the United Kingdom and ban pair trawling. After all, we in Britain have made some good decisions. We stayed out of the euro zone, our Prime Minister has probably dealt a mortal blow to the proposed Constitution, but, instead of following good practice, the EU seeks to sign up to a questionable agreement, simply to attempt once more to justify its own dubious international status. It shows, yet again, that if the EU is the answer it must have been a very stupid question."@en1
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