Mr President, the absence of Mr Fischler from this debate is significant, but I consider the absence of Mr Smidt, the Director-General, to be even more so. I can understand the Commissioner’s reasons, but not those of the Director-General. Mr Busquin, it is said that the Commission is a collegiate body. I, however, believe that if this really were the case, this difficult matter of the Fisheries Agreement with Morocco would have been addressed from the start with a global approach, involving all the Commissioners. I doubt that until now you will have heard of this problem, which is to be presented in this debate in all its harshness. You will leave here today wiser and the only thing we would like is to leave more informed. It is cold comfort that the European Union is financing compensation for fishermen and shipowners. From day one, what they have told us is that they wanted to fish. In any case, the aid will end on 31 December, the date planned for the conversion of the fleet. What a beginning to the third millennium for the European Union: we are converting the fleet because we have been incapable of negotiating a new Fisheries Agreement with Morocco. Eleven months after the expiry of the previous agreement, nobody is assuring us that we will reach an agreement before 31 December. What has not been achieved in eleven months will be difficult to achieve in a few days. Mr Busquin, I have sometimes, as a member of this Parliament, had the feeling that the European Commission, the Commissioner, and in particular the Director-General for Fisheries were acting as if they were ashamed of the sector and even of those Member States that they were called upon to represent in this negotiation. We all knew from the start that it was a difficult negotiation. Time has taught us that this could turn from being difficult to being impossible. Because contact cannot begin by turning our back on the demands of the sector and agreeing to Moroccan demands without any discussions. The Commission sent signals, not to the negotiators of the neighbouring country, but to European fishermen: too many cephalopod trawlers, a fleet with excess capacity, mixed enterprises, the need to negotiate by segments of the fleet, a ban on mentioning other types of trade and, of course, silence. Who does this silence benefit? Does it benefit Parliament, which is accountable to the citizens of the European Union? Does it benefit a sector which, more enterprising than the negotiators themselves, is going to Morocco and seeing that what is impossible for Brussels is possible for them: speaking directly to the Moroccans, establishing close contacts, principles of trade, industrial and fisheries agreements? Does it benefit the Directorate General of Fisheries which, with all the Community apparatus at its feet, still thinks that our fishermen are the bad guys and wonders why they do not do something else? We are left, Commissioner, not with the sentiment, but with the certainty that the sector would by itself have been capable of reaching an agreement which the Commission has still not reached today. This sentiment does not sit square with negotiations with a country that has an association agreement with the European Union and in whose development we are involved. And it fits in even less with a European Union that feels able to negotiate the accession of 13 new Member States. The Moroccan Government is requesting privileged relations with the European Union. It is right to do so and we should feel proud of this. We are the main importers of Moroccan fisheries, agricultural and industrial products. Moroccan agriculture enjoys special treatment when exporting to Europe. At each negotiation of fisheries agreements, when these were seasonal, Morocco systematically obtained permanent agricultural concessions. We could say that, eleven months after the docking, we are still paying for the previous agreement and the one before that. The European Union wants to continue its association with Morocco in the field of fisheries because we are convinced that a cooperation to the advantage of both parties is possible, for the same reasons that make the European Union the largest investor in Morocco. The first, the second and the third. Or that thousands of young Moroccans study at Spanish or French universities. Or that Morocco benefits from substantial European aid. Or that we share our Mediterranean policy with Morocco. If employment is truly one of the European Union’s priorities for action, an economic sector such as fisheries cannot continue to be sidelined. At least 40 000 direct or indirect jobs in the European Union depend on this agreement, in areas with no possibility of conversion. We are not dealing in intangibles . The Commission is well aware of the importance of fisheries agreements for certain regions that are highly dependent on this activity: European regions of Denmark, Ireland, Scotland, Andalusia, Portugal and, Galicia, with extremely high unemployment rates and no industrial activity, that have exchanged their potential competitiveness for a marginal activity that the Commission seems to want to marginalise still further – and I am sorry to be so harsh. For these regions, the last return of the fleet will, in the absence of any other alternative, constitute a fatal blow from which they will find it difficult to recover. The European institutions must ensure that citizens and fishermen do not see Europe as a panacea, but as a suitable framework for the defence of their interests.

Political group: PSE