Mr President, the Commission proposal which we are considering in the Fraga Estevez report talked of a proposal for a ban on driftnet fishing from the end of December 1997.

I wish to put on record that I deplore the indecent haste in the rush, on Monday of this week, on the basis of assertions - and not on the basis of scientific evidence - to arrive at a conclusion which puts this Parliament and its Committee on Agriculture, Fisheries and Rural Development and its recommendation in a position of trying to be more catholic than the Pope. I reject that approach.

It is difficult to avoid the suspicion that an ecological cloak is being donned to mask a fundamental set of economic interests because I know for a fact, as others have remarked here today, that some of those, from certain countries, who are the saints ecologically on this issue today have been far from saintly in other coastal waters in this Community, and I really wonder what it is that is the base point of this particular issue.

Mr Adam made a very interesting point here: we have had a unique opportunity for dialogue, to create an openness in terms of a citizens' Europe, to listen to the fishing communities, and we have rejected that possibility - or will reject it if we support this today. We must open our ears, our minds and the doors of this Parliament to people whose vital livelihood is at stake. If we vote for this today, we will have failed the test of a citizens' Europe.

Finally, I just wish to say that there is too much high-minded theological indifference to the real needs of coastal communities shown in this report, and if we vote for it today we do so at the peril of this Parliament.