Mr President, Commissioner, thank you for the information you have given us, and sincere congratulations on your excellent work during this legislature. We agree with your description of it as the legislature of safety at sea, and you have played the leading role in this. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr Vermeer, I am glad that you are here with us today, although we regret that Mr Sterckx cannot be with us to defend his report. On behalf of my group, please pass on our congratulations to him for the commendable and honest work he has been doing in order to be able to present to this House today the most objective and comprehensive report possible with the greatest possible consensus, on a sensitive and difficult matter. I would also like to congratulate Mr Jarzembowski on his excellent work as Chair. It is in this spirit of objectivity and consensus that I also wished to tackle this issue on behalf of the Group, both in committee and in plenary. My group, therefore, did not table many amendments, but those amendments were key as we believe that they affect significant points and, although we disagree on some approaches and would like others to be better thought through, I will only highlight those that I consider to be essential. First of all, our two amendments aim to correct statements in the report regarding fisheries in Galicia that are inaccurate and made rashly, without any basis, and could do a great deal of damage in the future. My obligation here is, without a doubt, to help increase safety at sea, but also to defend the truth and the fishing and shellfishing interests of Galicia, and to ensure that there is not a shadow of a doubt regarding the situation and quality of world famous products, which were managed and preserved before, during and after the Prestige in an exemplary manner. The fishing areas were closed during the accident and were opened as soon as the excellent Galician biologists, health professionals and technical staff advised that they should be, having carried out the strict tests required by Community standards. No one foresees that this will mean any future risk or undermine their profitability, as is being demonstrated by the market and by the research being conducted by the prestigious Spanish Oceanography Institute, with experiments being carried out on their own scientific vessels. Galicia’s fisheries management system is a model for many others in the world and we cannot allow a document from a Community institution – which is not specifically on fisheries but on safety at sea – to question it with no basis and to accuse us of overusing our resources or overfishing. We do not, therefore, understand how other Galician MEPs from other political groups have been able to support this absolute nonsense with their vote in committee, which I hope they will now correct in plenary. I also hope that they will support our second amendment, which clarifies the current paragraph 51, as the reduction in extractive activity due to the closure of fishing grounds for preventive reasons is not linked to the ultimate decrease in resources, as can be verified on the website of the Fisheries and Maritime Affairs Board of the Regional Government of Galicia, www.pescadegalicia.com, which gives all the updated fisheries statistics for the whole of 2003 by species, and shows that some species that have decreased are fished in international waters and not along the coast of Galicia, which makes it difficult for them to be affected by the Prestige accident. This is the rigour and accuracy that we want to see throughout the Sterckx report, defending the real situation of fisheries in order to support it, which you are aware that we want to do. Finally, paragraph 39 is also incorrect. The decision of various Member States of the European Union to ban ‘substandard’, or in other words ‘garbage’ vessels from their exclusive economic zones, may be controversial but has of course been the most effective one since the Prestige. Until international law is revised, as we ask in our amendment, now paragraph 40 (which is something that is going to take a long time) to amend, among other things, the so-called ‘inoffensive passage’ for these ‘floating bombs’, citizens want us to provide effective measures and there are few measures more effective than those taken by the French and Spanish Governments, supported by Portugal, Italy, Germany and the Council of Ministers of the European Union. These measures do not make it difficult to assist the ‘garbage’ vessel or its crew as they are escorted by naval ships, which provides them with the best possible means of assistance.

Political group: PPE-DE