Mr President, today we are discussing two new international fishing protocols between the European Union and third countries: Guinea and Mauritius, the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean. These two agreements are different in terms of geographical location, dimension, fishing allowances and financial compensation. However, at the end of the day, they are two important agreements which will add to the already significant network of international fisheries agreements between the European Union and third countries, the basic pillar of the common fisheries policy, since it is essential to cover our supply requirements, both for the European consumer and for our industry, and it is also essential to do so by means of our own fleet. The fisheries agreements with third countries therefore fulfil a crucial objective of the common fisheries policy, and they also contribute to employment and, in most cases, in European regions which are very dependent on this activity. They therefore create commercial balance, employment and preserve the competitiveness of Europe’s own significant fishing fleet. In its opinion on the 2001 budget, our committee has this afternoon approved the draft which our Vice-Chairman, Mrs Miguélez, had presented us, to increase budget line B7-8000 (International fisheries agreements) by EUR 7 million, thereby re-establishing the amounts in the preliminary draft budget presented at the time by the European Commission. Morocco, Mauritania and Greenland are great negotiating challenges for the European Commission and we all hope that these negotiations will soon conclude successfully. For the moment, we are happy today with the agreements with Guinea and Mauritius, which will cover important needs of different fleets, of different States of the European Union, in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Notable in both cases is the constant and worrying increase in the payments by shipowners while, curiously, these are not included in other agreements, as is notoriously the case with the agreement with Greenland. For example, in the case of Mauritius, there is an increase in the amount that shipowners are to pay for licences, of EUR 5 per tonne of fish, that is to say, they are increased from EUR 20 to EUR 25, and there is also an equivalent increase in the case of catches by ship. The European Union’s contribution is reduced by 29%, payable by shipowners which, in the case of complete exploitation of the fishing allowances, would mean a contribution of 23.5% of the total cost. In the previous protocol it was 7%, that is to say, there would be an increase from 7% to 23.5% of the total cost payable by shipowners. In this context we also wish to highlight the imbalances in the internal distribution of these fishing allowances by the European Commission amongst the Member States, as was the case with cephalopods in the agreement with Guinea. Both agreements give significant support to the local authorities for the conservation of their own fishing resources and furthermore advocate agreements between states as opposed to private agreements – which is very important in agreements such as the one with Morocco, which we are trying to negotiate – as well as the contribution of the European Union to the establishment of modern control systems, which forms part of the conservationist position of the European Union in all of the world’s seas, in accordance with its internal approach to its own Community waters. On the other hand, there is an important direct relationship between the financial compensation and the objectives and cooperation actions that have been agreed. In the case of the agreement with Mauritius, we are talking about 50%, as opposed to 30% in the previous agreement. As is so often the case, there is a lack of documentation for comparing figures and data between the protocols, although in this case we should thank the European Commission for including the minutes of the negotiations, in the case of Guinea, which makes more data available and ultimately makes the process more transparent. This is welcome and the European Parliament is grateful for it. The Committee on Fisheries has voted in favour of these agreements, and this has become the norm, since it considers that they are both highly beneficial to both parties, that is to say, the European Union and the third countries. The has now presented Parliament with an amendment of similar content to each of the reports which would mean – in the view of the rapporteur – that the common fisheries policy would cease to be common and would mean a departure from an important pillar of external policy. It would mean that only the direct beneficiaries of the agreement negotiated by the European Commission would pay for it, on behalf of the fifteen Member States of the European Union. The rapporteur is against this amendment, since, if only those who benefit directly from Community policies are to pay for them, that would quite simply be a way of breaking up the single market and dismantling the European Union itself. We are therefore in favour of both fisheries agreements, which we hope may continue in the future, and we are anxious, Commissioner, to be able soon to hold a debate in our Fisheries Committee, and to repeat what we are saying now, in relation to the extremely important fisheries agreement with Morocco. Keep up the hard work – I can see from the conversation we had this afternoon that you are working hard – and I encourage you also to move forward with that important negotiation.

Political group: PPE-DE