Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-06-17-Speech-4-066"
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"en.20100617.5.4-066"2
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"Mr President, at this stage I do not think that anyone is unaware – it is no longer a secret – that the value of this animal is extremely high, particularly in some markets such as the Asian ones. In fact it is so highly prized that some operators have been cheating and continue to do so.
I am aware of your personal commitment, Commissioner Damanaki, and you will have our full support to back that position. This is the only opportunity that we have to genuinely and seriously make progress on solving this problem, because if we do not we will have a more drastic and tougher opportunity later to put the issue back on the CITES table.
The next meeting will be in 2013, and we should not forget that in ICCAT in November we did not achieve the necessary solutions and compromise. CITES will continue to be and must be another door that we should knock on when the time is right.
Each year the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) adopts ever more complex and restrictive management measures: recovery plans, documentation schemes and vessel capacity restrictions, and every year the European Commission claims success at ICCAT, that finally the organisation has taken the necessary steps to reduce illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing of bluefin tuna, and that the situation is under control.
Time goes by, however, and the measures that are supposedly meant to ensure the conservation or at least the recovery of bluefin tuna either do not come, or come too late and are insufficient.
The premature closure of the purse seine season only a few days ago due to the fact that the EU quota had been almost exhausted demonstrates that there is still a problem of excess capacity in Europe, which is a huge threat to the survival of the species.
The stocks are not showing the necessary signs of medium-term recovery, in fact the signs are quite the opposite. The depleted status of both stocks of bluefin is well known. The spawning biomass of both stocks has been reduced to less than 15% of the unfished biomass. The combination of this with the very high prices paid for the fish, whether it is caught legally or not, and the obvious difficulties in controlling fishing activities and trade mean that the efforts of ICCAT over the past 20 years are at best insufficient.
Now we need some brave decisions, some of which will be drastic and certainly painful, but it is essential to have a vision for the future and more than ever to apply the precautionary principle, which has been so absent from the management of this fishery so far.
The report that we are voting on today is one more measure that is undoubtedly essential and necessary, but insufficient nonetheless. The aim of this new legislation, which I am pleased to have been able to agree with the various institutions, is to combat illegal fishing of bluefin tuna and improve the monitoring of stocks. The system establishes that every lot of tuna must be accompanied by the required documentation at every stage, from the time it is caught, including landing, transhipping, caging, harvesting, importing, exporting and re-exporting.
The documentation must be validated at each stage by the authorities of the competent State: the flag, trap or cage State and includes a wide range of information such as catch data, information on the exporter or seller, transhipment information, farm details, harvest information and finally trade information.
Following the frustration experienced by many people, myself included, regarding the fact that at its last meeting the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) did not include bluefin tuna on its list of threatened species, the ball is now back in ICCAT’s court. In November we have a fresh opportunity in Paris to see how decisive the situation is, and above all to assume that there is no time for more delays, legal trickery or falsely optimistic discourse. In Paris we will see whether this time the contracting parties – of which the European Union is one – are really strictly and scrupulously committed to the scientific recommendations."@en1
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