Madam President, Commissioner, regional fisheries organisations, which regulate fishing operations outside the 200 miles of exclusive economic zones, play a fundamental role in the regulation and rational management of fishery resources in international waters. They will be called upon to play an even more important role in the immediate future. As a result, the European Union must strengthen its presence in such regional organisations, in those that already exist and in those that may be created in the future. Unfortunately, in terms of human and technical resources, the European Commission is, in our opinion, currently unable to be present in each and every one of these regional fisheries organisations with the commitment they deserve, or in a way that reflects the important interests the different Community fleets have in the various oceans on this planet. NAFO is an exception and has perhaps become the best attended, most regulated and most monitored organisation of them all. It is also true that the Commission is paying greater attention to some of these organisations, as in the case of the ICCAT. This is certainly an organisation that is no stranger to pressure from this House and, more specifically, from our Committee on Fisheries. However, there are a number of other organisations – to mention only those that relate to the tuna species – and, alongside the aforementioned Atlantic tuna organisation, there is a pressing need for our presence in, and commitment to, the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission, the IOTC, the Inter-American Commission for Tropical Tuna, the IATTC, or the MHLC, the Multilateral High Level Conference, which is negotiating the convention that will govern the Western Pacific Council. The European Commission needs to have an effective presence, both in terms of human and technical resources, in all these organisations and, as I said, in those that may be created in the future. Parliament will help, and we shall spare no effort in ensuring that, in such organisations, the European Union has a level of influence that corresponds to our fisheries sectors. These sectors are calling for such an influence in view of third countries which, incidentally, sometimes defend their interests more vigorously than we defend ours. NAFO has served as a model in many cases. The regulation we are now considering represents an attempt to incorporate decisions adopted by the organisation in 1997, 1998 and 1999 into Community legislation to make our internal measures more effective. In this case, we are dealing with the thorny issue of trying to ensure that vessels which are not part of the organisation respect the rules laid down by regional fisheries organisations. Such vessels, whether operating under flags of convenience or not, simply act freely whilst others respect provisions on the conservation of resources and, of course, contribute to these respective laws. We support the measures drawn up, measures which are still scarce and difficult to apply, but which will continue to increase the world’s awareness of responsible fishing and trade and make such awareness more effective. The measures suggested by this House’s Committee on Fisheries are along these lines. They are measures which clarify some concepts to ensure greater accuracy and improve, as far as possible, upon the already significant control measures in NAFO waters. As we all know, a Community vessel that was operating in NAFO waters, the Santa Mafalda, has been ordered into the Portuguese port of Aveiro with Canadian NAFO inspectors on board. Whilst we await the findings of the port inspection, we ask everyone to comply with the NAFO fisheries’ regulatory measures. These measures on the conservation of resources are essential if such resources are to be maintained. We also call on the Canadian authorities to behave in accordance with NAFO control measures and not to exceed their authority. During the plenary sitting on this matter, Mr Kinnock, Vice-President of the Commission, acknowledged that they had exceeded their duties in appropriating the ship’s documentation without the authorisation of the captain of the vessel. Attitudes such as these remind us of a time we thought we had left behind, a time when Canada created a crisis, which we do not wish to see repeated under any circumstances. Therefore, we ask for a forceful response from the European Commission to Canada over their behaviour and – I should like to stress this and then conclude – we ask everyone to behave appropriately in order to conserve resources and we ask them to comply strictly with the rules laid down by NAFO.

Political group: PPE-DE