Mr President, thank you very much for your understanding. I wish to thank Mr Fischler for his statement on the fisheries agreement with Morocco, and I also wish to thank him for all the effort he is putting into these difficult negotiations. We all knew they would be difficult and lengthy. I should like to remind you here, as he too has said, but I want to stress this, that it is the first time that a President of the European Commission has been personally involved in negotiating a fisheries agreement. It must be clear both to the citizens of the European Union and to Morocco that all the institutions in the European Union – and at the highest level – want this agreement: the European Council wants it, and it said so at Nice; the President of the Commission, who has been to Rabat, wants it; and the European Parliament in Strasbourg wants it. So, for the time being, the one that does not want it, and I say for the time being, is Morocco, at least on the terms that the European Union is demanding. Let us hope that together we can soon manage to persuade them of the mutual benefits of this agreement and thus be able to associate President Prodi with this success. I just ask, Mr Fischler, that the negotiations be resumed as soon as possible – immediately if they can be – to make the most of the boost that the President of the European Commission himself has given them. As has also been said here, I do not want Morocco to draw our attention away from the extremely important debate that we have here today. We have been summoned to debate four major reports to do with the common fisheries policy and its future. I am going to focus, naturally, on mine, the one for which I am the rapporteur, but first I should like to congratulate Mr Poignant and Mr Gallagher and also Mr Cunha on the magnificent job they have done. I want to point out in relation to the report for which I am the rapporteur that I think it is the first one that a Community institution has drawn up on globalisation in fisheries, and therefore I think our Committee has hit the nail on the head with the two own-initiative reports it has decided to produce; the other one is still in progress. In mine, in this report, what I want to stress is this: first of all, Commissioner, the fishing industry in the European Union must start to shake off this almost domestic or almost marginal image that it currently has, perhaps because of the fact that it is confined to peripheral regions or because of the coldness of the Community GDP contribution figures that are always being mentioned. We have to recognise the global importance that fishing now has. We are becoming more and more dependent on imported fish; we have our own fleet on all the seas and we have enough technical knowledge of our own not to leave this strategic sector in the hands of third countries. The 2002 reform, therefore, must not serve just for us to carry on staring at our own navel in the form of our own Community waters, our own problems and our own misfortunes. What we really need is a fleet of the right size that is competitive at European and world levels. More competitive does not mean more predatory but simply more efficient at using the resources actually available, and doing this better than everyone else. The fishing sector is now strategic – and will be more so in the future – as a food reserve: healthy and safe animal proteins for a growing human population. We must involve fisheries – and this is also shown by the fisheries agreement with Morocco – in the European Union’s foreign policy and commercial policy. Our Union’s foreign fisheries policy has to earn credibility and an image, which it does not yet have, standing before world public opinion as it really is: the policy of a fishing power as compliant as any other with the United Nations principles, that is, the development of the international law of the sea, the conservation of resources for all, cooperation for development, etc. Let us therefore make it an active policy, both in fisheries agreements with third countries, adapted to each individual situation, and in the regional fishery organisations, in which we must play a leading role, as we have often said, and let us not resign ourselves to a situation in which the 15 states that today make up the European Union – tomorrow perhaps 20 or 25 – must forever have as much weight as, for instance, Estonia has now. The Council of Ministers of the European Union or the United Nations Security Council are examples to bear in mind of voting systems weighted by the specific weight of territories and populations, and we should bear this important example in mind. My report states that the European Union has not yet woken up to the importance of its fishery concerns at an international level. Admittedly, as I said earlier, its relative importance to the Community GDP is small, but we must not forget that ours is the fourth largest fleet in the world. If we total up the processing and marketing industry, subsidiary industries, investment in other countries and specialised shipbuilding, EU fisheries-linked economic activity is the most substantial in the world. Other powers, like the United States and Japan, are aware of this and are investing in this sector. In the World Trade Organisation we must not be afraid to stand up for our interests, and for our structural aid system too, since not all of it relates directly to fishing: some is aid for conserving and controlling resources, making vessels safer, improving fishery infrastructures and the selective arts of fishing. In the WTO we must demand the real liberalisation of port services, the freedom to invest and establish in third countries with full legal guarantees and freedom of access to ports. Let us denounce attempts to extend exclusive economic zones and lead the effective fight against flags of convenience. All this, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, is the real challenge facing the common fisheries policy from economic globalisation. The European Parliament is today offering this report to which I refer as food for thought for everyone on the eve of an historic reform of the common fisheries policy, so that we can all be clear about where we are and where we have to get to.

Political group: PPE-DE