Speeches Archive

Tuesday, 24th September 2013

Meeting the EU 2020 Biodiversity targets: mainstreaming conservation

Struan gave the following speech at a meeting of the European Parliament's Intergroup on Climate Change, Biodiversity and Sustainable Development on Tuesday 24 September 2013 in Brussels.

Tuesday, 17th September 2013

Speech on the plight of the Christian community in Iraq

Struan delivered the following speech at a meeting of the European Parliament's Delegation for Relations with Iraq on Tuesday 17 September 2013 at the European Parliament in Brussels.

Tuesday, 10th September 2013

Declining eel stocks - a slippery problem

The following speech was delivered to the European Parliament's Plenary Session in Strasbourg on 10 September 2013.

The European eel is shrouded in mystery. We know that it begins its life cycle in the Saragossa Sea in the middle of the North Atlantic and then spends almost a year drifting towards the European coasts where it metamorphoses into the transparent larval stage known as the glass eel. The glass eels then develop into elvers and swim upstream, spending most of their adult lives in fresh water before returning to the Saragossa Sea to spawn and die.