Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-02-10-Speech-2-156"
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"en.20040210.8.2-156"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, we are delighted to have you with us. The Commission proposal establishing a plan for the recovery of the Northern hake stock is made by virtue of the new provisions laid down in the framework regulation reforming the CFP. This new legislation, which in principle covers species that are under particular threat, is combined with a new instrument, management by fishing effort, which comes on top of the instruments already in place, in particular the setting of TACs and quotas. Following the cod recovery plan, the Northern hake plan is the second of this type to be proposed by the Commission. It in fact turns out to be the second link in a long chain because, since it was tabled, two further plans with exactly the same structure have been referred to Parliament, concerning Southern hake, Norway lobster in the Cantabrian Sea and sole in the Bay of Biscay and the Channel, and we are told that further plans are in the pipeline, in respect in particular of Norway lobster and plaice.
This point should be stressed, all the more so because it would seem that when a fishing undertaking fishes stocks under different recovery plans, it is obliged to comply with the provisions of all of the recovery plans concerned, both for catches from stocks subject to recovery measures and catches from stocks of similar species. This is what arises in particular from the written answer dated 9 February that you have just sent me, Commissioner, in response to a question that I had asked you. This is a particularly onerous constraint for the industry, especially in areas where the Commission intends to superimpose several recovery plans that apply to practically all of the species fished, and I am thinking in particular of those in the Bay of Biscay.
Originally, the Commission had planned to deal with cod and Northern hake stocks together, despite the fact that these two species have very different characteristics. Fortunately, this unsatisfactory link was subsequently broken.
Our committee drafted its report after holding in-depth consultations with representatives of the industry concerned, notably at a hearing in Brussels on 25 November that was attended by representatives of the French, Spanish and British trade organisations. They expressed particular regret that they had not been properly involved in drafting the recovery plan or in producing the assessment of the state of the stock on which the recovery plan is based, contrary to the provisions of the new framework regulation and contrary to what Parliament had called for, in particular in its opinion on integrating environmental protection requirements into the CFP. We were told that the regional workshop organised by the Commission was more like an information session on decisions that had already been taken than a meeting involving genuine consultation prior to any decision.
The industry representatives also stressed the fundamental imbalance in the Commission proposal. This is based purely on considerations of a biological nature and is not accompanied by any impact assessment of the socioeconomic consequences of the proposed plan. In fact, it is clear that the drastic reduction in total allowable catches (TACs) planned for the very beginning of the plan is incompatible with the survival of undertakings involved in fishing Northern hake.
The industry representatives also wished to tell us of their reservations about the effectiveness and practicability of the rule for reducing fishing effort, whether it be by the system of days at sea or kilowatt-days. They told us of their fear that superimposing a new management system on the system of TACs and quotas and on the specific management measures already adopted might jeopardise the principle of relative stability and contribute to an increase in discards. They also doubt that a system for reducing fishing effort can effectively achieve the desired result in terms of improving stocks. In fact, we do not have any scientific evaluation by ICES on this subject such as to guarantee that a reduction in effort really would reduce catches. Nor do we have an evaluation of the transitional measures taken to restore stocks under Annex XVII to the regulation setting TACs and quotas for 2003. Furthermore, the extremely complex effort reduction formula entails serious problems of equity and predictability for the Member States. Moreover, it institutes a uniform and rigid system, transposed practically unchanged from one stock to another, which does not take any account of the specific characteristics of the various Community fleets, particularly their versatility.
Your Committee on Fisheries considered the multiannual approach that was adopted to address the issue of the management of the Northern hake stock to be perfectly well-founded and appropriate. This approach actually sets an essential conservation objective for the long term, while at the same time giving fishermen the visibility and security that they need to guarantee the survival of their businesses, which is no less essential. Nevertheless, it seemed to us that establishing a plan for the recovery of the Northern hake stock was a measure that was disproportionate to the state of the stock concerned as revealed by the latest scientific reports and observations of fishermen. Although it is clear that we need to remain vigilant, the trend observed over the last two years shows an increase in the level of the resource.
As the Northern hake stock is not outside safe biological limits, it would not seem appropriate to us to apply a recovery plan to it under Article 5 of the framework regulation. In your committee’s view, the Northern hake stock should be covered by a multiannual management plan pursuant to Article 6 of the same regulation. This instrument would appear to us to be preferable because it corresponds better to the state of the resource and will better enable us to achieve the twofold objective of the sustainable conservation of the stock and the conservation of our fisheries. In making this proposal to substitute a multiannual management plan for the recovery plan advocated by the Commission, we are completely in line with the approach that we have already adopted that recommends that fragile stocks should be managed by adopting simple, flexible rules, that can be constantly adjusted – such as multiannual TACs – rather than uniform and complex systems with uncertain effects, like the arrangements for management via fishing effort, which have not yet been tried and tested."@en1
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