Mr President, I congratulate the rapporteurs on their work because the reports that we are now discussing are broadly to be welcomed, make considerable improvements to the most negative aspects of the Commission’s proposals and incorporate various amendments that I tabled in the course of the preparatory work in the Committee on Fisheries, although in some cases I disagree with the solution that has been found and I feel that the report could have gone further. I would highlight the aspects of this revision that are most worth saving: a permanent derogation governing access to resources within the 12-nautical mile zones of Member States' territorial waters is crucial to traditional fishing and to the socio-economic fabric of regions that are dependent on fishing, defending small-scale coastal fishing, protecting fish stocks and the most sensitive part of the coastal rim. I would remind you that one proposal which we tabled previously has already been adopted here, calling for this derogation to be extended to 24 nautical miles. At least the permanent nature of 12 miles should not now be called into question! The adoption of the proposal that we tabled to extend this derogation to 50 miles in the outermost regions under the terms of their special status is also extremely positive. This special status, when confirmed by the Council, will provide clear advantages for the protection of the fisheries sector in the autonomous regions of Madeira, the Azores and in all the outermost regions, thereby contributing to their development. We must reject the reprogramming of the Structural Funds (FIFG) for the fisheries sector, preventing the appropriations for the ‘modernisation’ objective being transferred to the destruction of vessels, which is, as a matter of fact, in line with the Committee on Fisheries’ opinion on the 2003 budget. As we have pointed out, there are other alternative ways of reducing the fishing effort, which have already been referred to here, such as the system based on regulating days at sea, the adoption of biological recovery periods and technical measures geared to more selective fishing. It must be said, Commissioner, that in certain regions, what causes the greatest destruction of fish stocks is not fishing, but pollution. And, now, unfortunately, we have the case of the Prestige, showing that this is sadly true: what causes the greatest destruction are these accidents; the old and unsafe oil tankers that still sail around our coasts. The scrapping of vessels must be seen as a last resort, bearing in mind that any new policy to reduce fleet capacity must be based on the degree of true compliance with previously set objectives and must not further penalise those who have already fulfilled these objectives. Even prohibition, in some cases, for vessels less than 12 metres long, although positive, is extremely limited. We need to go further. We must nevertheless bear in mind that any reduction of fishing effort must go hand in hand with an increase in the financial resources for the FIFG and the Union’s internal policies, in order to compensate for the socio-economic effects of such a reduction. I also regret the fact that the specific programme for small-scale coastal fishing has not been adopted. The participation of fishermen and their representative organisations in the decision-making process is also crucial to the common fisheries policy and to stock management, specifically through co-management, so as to guarantee genuine decentralisation. We also feel that it is the Member States’ responsibility to guarantee the effective monitoring, inspection and implementation of the rules laid down in the common fisheries policy. We therefore disagree with the proposals intended to undermine this principle.

Political group: GUE-NGL