Madam President, I am beginning my speech in this debate on fisheries very moved, as you know, by the events that have taken place in Galicia. I remember that, while I was chairman of the Committee on Fisheries, the tragic accident involving the Erika took place, and our committee put an oral question and adopted a resolution. At that point we were all united, and I hope we are in this case as well. I would like to stress – and you know this – that Galicia is the region most dependent on fishing in the whole of Europe and is extraordinarily rich in seafood and fish, which, following the Prestige accident, is going to take many years to recover, above all in the areas most directly affected by the oil slick. I am going to prepare a motion for a resolution and I believe that the political groups must be united, so that this House can issue a political opinion, so that events of this type never happen again. I believe that we have a very important political responsibility. It is terrible to see fishing resources covered in petrol, dead sea birds and the fishermen who live exclusively from the sea. Sometimes over-fishing is discussed but these issues are not. I believe it is very important to bear it in mind and I hope, as I have said, that all our colleagues will show solidarity. With regard to the reports before the plenary, there has been no mention of the Busk report, and I would like to congratulate him, because there is no need for either a debate or for amendments since we have all agreed on the issue of illegal fishing and also the fight against it; it is therefore important to point it out. I believe that the report by Mr Souchet has worked out well. It is a reasonable and positive report, and there are no amendments to it in this House either. With regard to the report by Mr Stevenson, everybody knows what happened and I am not going to go into details; today we are dealing with the report which carries the name of the chairman of our committee. I would simply say to you that my political group has presented certain minimal amendments; we have tried to clear up certain issues. I would like to say, and I say this in general, that we are dealing with a communication. In other words, we are not dealing with a legislative document, but the report by Mr Jové will be, and we will examine that report during the next part-session. I hope that we can focus all our efforts and use the balanced approach indicated here, in order to adopt the commitments in this report, which will have to be debated, as I have said, at the next part-session in Brussels. With regard to the amendments we have presented, we have tried to remove the word ‘permanent’ from the twelve miles, because the Legal Services of the Council and the European Parliament, as well as the Commission, accept that, since it is a derogation from the Treaty, it cannot be permanent, because that would amount to a modification of the Treaty itself. Therefore, it is simply a measure that requires a time limit. Since we are not in agreement on whether it is five, ten, fifteen or twenty years, we have simply asked that we may adopt an agreement on this during the debate on the Jové report.

Political group: PPE-DE