18
May
2026
Watch
The impact of the implementation of the Maritime Spatial Planning Directive 2014/89/EU on fisheries in selected fishing areas and sea basins (debate)
Mr President, yes, it is clear that our seas are not spaces without rules and borders. And today, it is true, there is less and less space and more and more actors, which multiplies the conflicts of use that are bound to multiply and break out again in the future. But the record of your application of this famous Maritime Spatial Planning Directive, Commissioner, is overwhelming. Let’s start – I will take just one example – with the irrational policy choice of offshore wind, which has come at the expense of our fisheries, the environment, our food and energy sovereignty, and the taxpayer. It was not in the spirit of the Directive that it sought to promote the harmonious, fair and balanced development of our maritime space. We have debated this many times in this House. The fishermen alerted you, the shellfish farmers, the aquaculturists, all those people with whom you refuse to discuss alerted you and you persist. Despite the failure of these intermittent, costly and devastating energies that you continue to defend, you have made the choice to overwhelm the fishing world with absurd and bureaucratic standards, to fight our fishermen and you do not know the problems they face, which our aquaculturists, our shellfish farmers, all these sectors so indispensable to our food sovereignty. So, therefore, real questions, in fact, arise in this debate today. In the long term, are you aware of the ecological consequences of offshore wind that will reverberate in the coming decades? In the short term, are you aware that you are definitively condemning our fishing industry? So, Commissioner, there is no policy without reality. And today's reality requires us to stop wind power offshore, to preserve our fishing grounds, to defend our fishermen and our food sovereignty.