Fraga Estévez (PPE-DE), rapporteur. – (ES) Mr President, as I think that you all already know, the negotiations to renew the fisheries agreement with Morocco came to an end without that renewal having taken place.

You will also be aware that the negotiations went on for an extraordinarily long time, 15 months, which placed the Community fleet in a truly unprecedented position, stopping activity for a period that had not been foreseen by Community legislation. Article 16 of the FIFG Regulation, in letter b) of Paragraph 1, allows the temporary inactivity of vessels to be funded if a fisheries agreement is not renewed for 6 months, which may be extended for 6 more months, following the presentation of a conversion plan. This period and the extension period ended on 31 December, while we were still in the middle of negotiations with Morocco.

The Commission realised then that shipowners and crews could not be left unprotected while the negotiations continued, which is why the proposal for a Regulation that is being voted on today was presented in order to change the legal basis of the FIFG Regulation with two objectives: on the one hand, enabling the aid to be extended for 6 more months, until 30 June, and on the other hand, authorising the Member States concerned to exceed the threshold of 4% of the FIFG budget that they may use for aid due to the inactivity of the fleet. The period had, obviously due to the extraordinary nature of the situation, had already been long exceeded. It was therefore a totally reasonable proposal.

However, when the report that we are debating was practically finished, the Council of Ministers in April considered the negotiations to be completed, and in May the Commission had still not presented its proposal for measures that would consider the conversion plan. We know that the Commission intends to put forward a proposal for a Regulation in this respect at the next Council of Fisheries Ministers on 18 June, but for technical reasons it will not be able to be adopted until 3 July, which will cause a considerable delay in the timetable, given that consultation by the European Parliament is also provided for.

The shipowners will also have to be able to closely consider the options available to them, according to the type of vessel that they have, as choosing between scrapping their vessel, locating it in another fishing ground or forming a joint venture with a foreign partner are business decisions that cannot be taken lightly.

On the other hand, the workers concerned will probably have to wait even longer, as they will be dependent on the decisions of their companies in order to know, for example, whether they are going to leave a fishing ground in order to fish in another or if they are simply going to be unemployed, in which case the formula chosen will be scrapping. It is obvious that these decisions cannot be taken before 30 June, when the formulae that will ultimately be offered to them are still not known now.

Therefore, before this report was voted on in committee, I introduced an amendment to change the dates of the Commission proposal and put them back from 30 June to 31 December. The Committee on Fisheries understood the situation perfectly and, also taking into account that extending the period does not carry financial consequences for the Community budget, as the aid will continue to come from the FIFG of the Member States concerned, it decided to unanimously support the amended content of the report.

I therefore hope that in the light of the reasons that I have given and following the unquestionable support of the Committee on Fisheries, this plenary will be able to also adopt the text that is being voted on today.

Meanwhile, I would not like to finish without being able to congratulate the two rapporteurs and especially, from my point of view, for the Committee on Fisheries, Mr Poignant, and I assure him that our group will support his report. I would like to highlight Amendment No 5 to that report, because I think that it fits in much better with Article 29, Paragraph 4 of Regulation (EC) No 1260/1999, which allows a maximum contribution of 50% to SMEs in the outermost regions.

We should not forget that measures to modernise vessels tend to be what makes the difference between a competitive business and a business in difficulties, as well as ensuring that its workers have a more decent employment. Precisely for this reason, they should be the last public investments that should disappear or stop being well provided for financially.