mr president i think there is a great deal of agreement commissioner between this house and your office as you develop the strategy
i think there is a wide agreement that we can achieve more together by creating a forum for encouraging cooperation amongst the regions and states and nations of the atlantic arc but i would counsel gently against priorityitis which is a disease that afflicts us in this chamber particularly badly
if you try to achieve three hundred million objectives we might end up doing nothing very well so i would pick out two particular priorities where i think the eu could add real genuine eu added value
in paragraph eight there is a focus on interconnectors for marine energy
we have a massive renewable energy potential in the atlantic region
coming from scotland we have a vast contribution to make towards our climate change and our regional development objectives
we could play a great role in that
in paragraphs nine to eleven the importance of marine transport could also have hugely important economic as well as environmental output
there is much in this to admire but i would hope that the commission will have a greater degree of focus than the many all very worthy objectives we have seen from this house this evening
