Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-06-06-Speech-3-227"
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"en.20070606.21.3-227"2
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".
Mr President, firstly I would like to express my thanks to the rapporteur, Mr Chmielewski, and to both the Committee on Fisheries and the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety for the report. The objective is to have the proposal agreed at the June Council next week. During discussions held in the context of the Council preparations, many changes have been introduced to the original proposal, some of which go in the direction of your suggested amendments.
As misreporting is presently one of the key problems in the management of the Baltic cod fishery, it is crucial to improve these rules to monitor comprehensively how much is taken from which cod stock, and when. For similar reasons, I cannot accept Amendment 13, which limits the requirement for a log book to vessels with a special permit for cod fishing.
The report proposes to reduce the valuation period from three to two years and to introduce a provision on the monitoring of the socio-economic impact of the plan in Amendments 17 to 19.
New cod recruits enter the fishery at the age of two to three years on average. If an evaluation began during the second year, it would be very difficult to detect any effects on the stock and, consequently, on the industry. The Commission is, however, planning a project that will monitor not only the ecological but also the socio-economic impact of the plan as a first step towards the impact assessment to be made in the third year of the application of the plan.
Finally, I turn to the three amendments tabled by Mr Schlyter last week. They are not acceptable to the Commission for the following reasons. The objective of the basic regulation for the common fisheries policy is to ensure sustainable management in ecological, social and economic terms. It is therefore the Commission’s responsibility to strive for a balance between these three pillars, albeit based primarily on scientific advice regarding the stocks. I thus consider a gradual reduction of TACs and fishing efforts until target levels are met, as advised by ICES, to be a good balance in this respect.
ICES also recommended using relative targets such as fishing mortality instead of fixed ones such as biomass, because they are less sensitive towards scientific uncertainty and the environmental variations affecting the stock.
In the current situation whereby a high level of misreporting is interfering with management and scientific advice and in view of the possible upcoming revision of the biomass reference points for the eastern stock, the inclusion of biomass targets is not appropriate. However, as an expected outcome of the plan is the improvement of the basis of scientific information, the inclusion of biomass reference levels could be considered in the course of the revision of the cod recovery plan, which is envisaged to take place after the plan has been in force for three years.
As you are well aware, both cod stocks in the Baltics suffer from over-exploitation, with the eastern cod stock falling so far below safe biological limits that it may be in risk of collapse in the near future. At the same time, ICES has indicated that misreporting of catches occurs in 35 to 45% of cases in the eastern Baltic, which not only results in an additional unaccounted fishing impact on the stock but also affects the accuracy of scientific advice.
The current situation not only harms the cod stocks in the Baltic but is also threatening the fishing sector reliant on this resource. Cod is one of the most important fish stocks for the industry in the Baltic. It is therefore crucial, not only from an ecological but also from a social and economic perspective, to bring fishing into balance with resource availability as soon as possible, so that fishers can once more count on stable and high catches.
The multiannual plan presented by the Commission has been developed on the basis of past experience with managing cod fisheries in the Baltic and on several consultations held with stakeholders, Member States and scientists. It aims at rebuilding the stocks not only towards safe biological limits but even beyond, to levels that will provide the highest sustainable catches, thus providing stability in the long term for the fishing sector concerned, by reducing total allowable catches and fishing efforts step-by-step to the levels corresponding to this objective.
Turning now to the report, the recitals of the plan correspond to the measures that are later outlined in the actual provisions. I can therefore only accept Amendments 1 and 5, which correspond to the provisions of the plan, such as the request to specify the status of the eastern cod stock in the first recital. Amendment 4 is acceptable in principle. However, the split into western and eastern parts is determined by scientific evidence that there are two separate cod stocks in the Baltic, and not by the ecological features of the two areas.
The report proposes several amendments to the rules outlining the procedure for reducing total allowable catches and fishing effort to sustainable levels. Amendments 8 to 11 would result in a mitigation of the reduction process and would limit its application.
In view of the serious situation of the stock and the need to limit all types of fisheries catching significant amounts of cod, I cannot accept these amendments. I am, however, aware of the need to define a system that the industry can deal with. The Commission has therefore changed its plan by combining the summer ban and the days absent from port. This will increase flexibility for the industry, and will thus particularly benefit small-scale fleets, for which a fixed and rigid system is more difficult to work with. Moreover, an article on the European Fisheries Fund has been included in the plan to ensure financial compensation for the industry.
Changes to the effort system mean that several of the provisions on control and monitoring have also been changed. The margin of tolerance has been raised to 10%, except for cod, and the rules on discharging have been deleted, which should correspond to the provisions of Amendments 14 and 16 of the report.
Concerning Amendment 15, the rules on entry and exit from the area have been changed as well, meaning that the specified requirements apply only where the vessel is leaving the area in which it has been fishing."@en1
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