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Ian Hudghton,
on behalf of the
Verts/ALE Group
. – Mr President, I wish to thank our
rapporteur, Mr Ó Neachtain, and assure him of my full support for his
report, which I hope will be adopted unamended.
I know of no one with any interest
whatsoever in fisheries who would not support the principle of
environmentally friendly fishing methods: the people with most to gain,
after all, from protecting the marine environment and ensuring a balance
between conservation and harvesting of fish stocks are the fishermen
themselves. Most of the fishermen I know are not just fishing for today
but are hoping that, one day, their families will be able to follow them
into the business.
However, there is much more to
environmental protection than just technical measures, important as they
will always be. The CFP itself, I would contend, is not environmentally
friendly: TACs and quotas measure not the amount of fish caught but only
the fish landed. Discards are caused by the
CFP, rather than prevented by it.
Many people in Scotland’s
fisheries-dependent communities are totally disillusioned with the
European Union’s management of fisheries; so much so that, today, the
Scottish Parliament’s European Committee considered a petition based on
250 000 signatures calling for withdrawal from the CFP. The Scottish
Parliament agreed to ask for legal advice on this. That was not done
lightly, but because there is a real and serious need for more radical
reform than we have had thus far. |
