Commissioner, the regional fisheries organisations are becoming increasingly important, particularly in fishing grounds with shared sovereignty or in the management of migratory or straddling stocks. As they are adapted to the specific characteristics of their areas, they are a particularly appropriate instrument for the rational management of resources. It is therefore a matter of priority that the European Union should equip itself with the machinery needed to ensure the full participation it deserves. The Commission’s communication confines itself to dealing with those aspects relating to the powers of the Community and Member States in tasks arising from their participation in those organisations. This approach is necessary but inadequate, since the European Union needs to adopt clear, uniform and homogeneous guidelines for its participation in the regional fisheries organisations. In view of the diverse nature of the existing regional organisations, the Community's participation in each of them must be suited to their individual characteristics. It must, however, obey the same basic principles from a legal and institutional point of view. Therefore the report by the parliamentary Committee on Fisheries advocates sharing tasks evenly between the Community and the Member States with regard to the regional fisheries organisations as a whole. The leading role in the Community’s action should be played by the Commission, the guardian of Community interests, but it should not only deal with the representative role to which it seems hitherto to have confined itself through lack of resources. In future the Commission must not confine itself to being a mere figurehead: it must unequivocally and specifically take up all aspects of the Community's participation in these regional organisations, representing it, monitoring the transmission and verification of data, participating in scientific fora, and in general guiding Community action, including monitoring the fishing carried out in the context of these organisations. The monitoring of fisheries affects the jurisdiction of the Member States and hence to a certain extent the core of their sovereignty. This monitoring should be transferred to an unequivocally Community body, so that the common fisheries policy can apply to all Member States and to all vessels and crews regardless of their nationality, thus avoiding any possible breach of the principle of equal treatment. The administration of monitoring and, progressively, its actual execution must therefore be assigned to the Commission, and hence the cost of this must be borne by the Community budget. The existing machinery for transposing rules into Community law needs to be improved in order to increase legal certainty and to overcome its current sluggishness. But faster transposition into Community law of the rules adopted within the regional organisations does not exempt the Council and Parliament from doing their job of steering the Community fisheries policy. In view of the growing importance of the regional fisheries organisations (RFO), the European Union must fully exercise its powers in fisheries matters, but this raises a problem above all of human and material resources. Perhaps to side-step the problem of resources, the Commission has decided to propose a reformulation of the duties to be performed by the Community and the Member States, without modifying their respective competences. Although this approach might be acceptable as a temporary measure, it could cause serious regulatory and, above all, institutional problems if it were made permanent. The distribution of tasks proposed by the Commission would assign ‘high-level’ representation to the Community and delegate representation on scientific and technical committees to the Member States. Contributing to the work of the RFOs would also be entrusted to the Member States, as would inspection and monitoring tasks. This means that the Community's role as a contracting party would be reduced to a mere façade. European integration cannot be confined to declarations without any tangible content. While there is a common fisheries policy and the Community has powers in the sphere of fisheries it must equip itself with the human and material resources needed to tackle its obligations, as required by the principle of adequacy of resources inherent in the common fisheries policy. Similarly, if the Community is a contracting party in the RFOs, it must behave accordingly and perform the role required of it. The implementation of this principle has financial implications and requires legal changes and, possibly, sacrificing a certain amount of sovereignty; but if a particular model of political integration is chosen the means must be provided for that model to be put into practice.

Political group: GUE-NGL