Mr President, I am speaking in order to present, and ask your support for, a new Fisheries protocol, this time with Madagascar – as you have said – with whom we have had relations since 1986. From the point of view of what has come to be called cost/benefit, it is an excellent protocol which clearly demonstrates the viability of this type of agreement for the European Union. In this case, the Community fleet, industry and market are ensured a stable supply of a raw material, tuna, of which we have a considerable deficit, by means of our own fleet, which means that many Community jobs will be retained, not only in the extractive sector, but also in the activities dependent on it. Furthermore, the protocol once again demonstrates that, in the Southern agreements, a high proportion of the fishing opportunities are utilised, in this case reaching 91% for tuna seiners. It is just as viable for Madagascar, which in addition to the EUR 308 000 in annual financial compensation, will receive a further EUR 517 000 for development aid actions, mainly aimed at improving the fishing control of the area and the training of its fishermen. Furthermore, the number of Malagasy seamen which must be employed rises from 6 in the protocol currently in force to 40 in the protocol under discussion. This is therefore a genuinely significant quantitative leap. Community fishing activity in itself does not interfere with small-scale fleets, since our fleet does not have access to the twelve mile zone. Meanwhile, the presence of the European Union in itself makes a significant contribution to the control and guarantee of greater sustainability of the resource. We must not forget that the fleet carries with it all the control regulations of Community policy, which is a very important element in terms of ascertaining the details of catches and the state of the resource in the region, to a degree which cannot be matched by all the other diverse foreign fleets that fish in those same Malagasy waters. Following this brief summary of the content of the protocol, and reminding you that, as a Southern agreement, the shipowners contribute to its funding, I would like to focus on two issues. I would like to draw your attention firstly to the fact that with this agreement, as in Southern agreements in general, there remains the possibility of granting licences to those interested Member States that would not have access to the fishing opportunities on the basis of relative stability, as demonstrated by the presence of Italy and Portugal. It is therefore time to ask the Commission once and for all to implement the views of the 1997 Council of Fisheries Ministers, which clearly request that fishing opportunities which remain unused may be used by interested Member State fleets in all agreements of the European Union. Secondly, I do not believe it necessary to point out that we are all committed to the development of third countries, as clearly demonstrated by the Lannoye report, which preceded the debate on fisheries. The fisheries sector has been one of the first to cooperate in this development, since its presence in the waters of third countries has been the catalyst for many of the first industrial centres in their coastal regions, if not the definitive element in terms of many nations now having taken on the genuine vocation of a fishing State. But, having said that, I believe things are reaching the point where clarification is necessary from several points of view. To begin with, we must not forget, as the aforementioned Council of Fisheries Ministers also made clear, that fisheries agreements are essentially of a commercial nature. However, they are increasingly becoming a complement to Community development aid policy. In the case of this agreement, the proportion intended for development cooperation actions is now rising to 62.6% of the total cost of the agreement to the Community budget. This situation raises many questions. Firstly, there is no reason why fisheries budgets should be financing the development policy budgets and, from the point of view of budgetary transparency, this state of affairs should be clarified as soon as possible. Secondly, this situation should also be clarified in order to silence those voices which complain about the high budgetary cost of the fisheries agreements, when in reality, as we have seen, considerably more than half of that budget is pure development policy.

Political group: PPE-DE