Mr President, this report deals with the Commission's review of the multi-annual guidance programmes. Technically it covers the period up to 30 June 2002, but since Parliament is not going to do a report on the final situation as at 31 December, I will make some comments on the situation up to that date. This was the fourth generation multi-annual guidance programme, a series of programmes dating back to 1983. They tried to exert some control over the size and distribution of EU fleets. They have lasted for 20 years altogether. Considering that their objective was to achieve a balance on a sustainable basis between resources and their exploitation, and in the light of the advice coming from ICES over the past few days, it can be safely concluded that they have been a resounding failure. To its credit, the Commission has proposed a far more comprehensive and important cut in fleet capacity than the Council was ever able to accept. For example, the agreed objectives for the Member States' combined fleets were so modest that the Community fleet as a whole was already smaller than the overall objectives, even before the MAGP IV entered into force. Some fleets required no reductions at all. Yet at the end of the programme in December 2002 only five of the 13 countries had met the objectives for all the different fleet segments. Spain, often criticised this House, was one of them. Clearly the Member States did not have their heart in the exercise. Now the MAGPs themselves are being scrapped. While we recognise that they were ineffective and cumbersome to administer, at least they had the goal of reducing fleet capacity. What has been put in place in the so-called reform does not even do that. Each Member State has been allocated a certain capacity for fishing vessels in tonnage and kilowatts, but there is no requirement for that capacity to be reduced. As the Commissioner himself said, only if public money is used is there any requirement to reduce capacity. As fish stocks are decreasing in abundance faster than the fishing fleets chasing them, the future does not look bright for either the fish or the coastal communities and the people depending on the fishing industry for a living. This is going to cause a major socio-economic crisis. It is looming on the horizon. As Mr Stevenson has said, they are going to suffer endless hardship. But that is going to be the case if we do not realise what the problem is and how to address it. As Mr Lamy is Commissioner for trade, he may be interested in knowing how the EU engages in free trade with fishing vessels. During the period 1998 to 2001, at least 746 vessels were exported to third countries. The number could be many times greater but since most of the vessels had left the fleet, the Commission has no idea what happened to them. They were simply decommissioned. Of those 746 vessels, at least 38 were directly exported to known flag of convenience countries. There are even examples of shipowners being funded by the FIFG to export to flag of convenience countries. Even Mr Lamy would have to admit that it is difficult to have a more liberalised trade than that! Another problem with the management of the MAGPs by the Commission relates to the waters beyond the European Union. A couple of years ago, the Commission allowed a rather large vessel, the Atlantic Dawn to join the Irish fleet, with the consequence that another vessel, the Veronica, was exported to a flag of convenience country, Panama. This was supposedly because the fish of Mauritania are or were plentiful. Earlier this year the Commission did a similar favour for the Dutch. This time they allowed the equivalent of three 'Atlantic Dawns' into the Dutch register to fish the same fish off Mauritania. But the Commission's own scientific advice says that there should be no increase in fishing effort there, so I cannot see how this can be justified. There is a major problem with rewarding the law-breakers. In the case of the Atlantic Dawn that vessel was illegal. What did the Commission do? It helped make it legal. It has made an illegal situation legal. It has done the same with the Dutch. It has now legalised an illegal situation. It sends out a clear signal to anyone else who wants to do this: basically break the law, ignore it, and the Commission will help you at the end of the day. That is the wrong signal to send out. It is clear that the Commission bends over backwards to accommodate shipowners of these huge supertrawlers. These are not the little coastal communities that will be affected, these are the huge business ventures. I am appalled at Commissioner Byrne who also bent over backwards to help the owner of the Atlantic Dawn, the world's biggest pelagic trawler, to get that fishing licence. I believe it was a breach of his duty as a Commissioner to act in the interests of an individual businessman from his own country. That should also be investigated. I would like to know how many more Commissioners are bending over backwards to facilitate specific business interests against the interests of the Community as a whole.

Political group: Verts-ALE