Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-05-22-Speech-2-482-000"
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"en.20120522.20.2-482-000"2
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"Madam President, last January, a bluefin tuna caught off the coast of north-eastern Japan reached a record high in the first auction of the fish market in Tsukiji in Tokyo, reaching EUR 570 000. The price of this 269 kilo tuna beats last year’s previous record of EUR 320 000. This is simply crazy and explains how important this business is.
Tomorrow, the European Parliament will vote on EU legislation introducing new internationally agreed rules for the bluefin tuna fishery in European waters. As the 2012 bluefin fishing season opened last week, the rules clearly need to be swiftly implemented. In addition to quotas, these rules set out the conditions, practice and equipment for the fishing and farming of these iconic and endangered fish species. Unfortunately, the rules fall far short of what international scientific advice deems necessary to give this unique, beautiful and highly priced fish species a decent chance of recovering from its current critically low stock levels.
The sorry state of bluefin tuna in the Atlantic and Mediterranean is well known. Atlantic bluefin tuna stocks have declined by up to three-quarters over the past 40 years and, given the long reproductive cycle of the fish, the prospects for recovery are not good. Documented and legal over-fishing of bluefin has been really exacerbated by illegal, regulated and unreported fishing of these high-value fish. High profile cases of this kind included last year’s illegal fishing in Libyan waters during the war.
The heavy involvement of organised crime in the fishing and farming of bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean is also a major cause of concern. Furthermore, given the scale of illegal and unreported fishing, it is impossible to get an accurate picture of how many fish are being caught. However, different estimates suggest the amounts being caught are multiples of the actual allowed quotas, which themselves are already unsustainable.
In that sense, this new legislation, although necessary, represents a missed opportunity for the EU to take meaningful steps to prevent the demise of bluefin tuna. Instead, Europe is continuing to hide behind the fig-leaf offered by ICCAT (International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas), or rather its contractual parties.
Many of us believe that, ultimately, only a complete ban on commercial fishing would give the species a fighting chance of recovery. Failing that, ICCAT should be agreeing to completely close certain areas for bluefin fishing, particularly during the spawning season, rather than simply adopting half-hearted quotas that are not in line with scientific advice.
I tried this with the previous amendments to my report, but unfortunately, the majority of my colleagues did not follow this. That was bad luck. Still, I believe that the EU, as the main fisher of this stock, must accept a large chunk of responsibility for driving bluefin tuna to the brink. Tougher controls of the fleet and the related industry are also necessary to prevent illegal fishing and over-fishing. The EU must mobilise more resources to this end and assist other ICCAT members that lack the resources for proper enforcement. This is particularly true in the Mediterranean.
The EU legislation set to be adopted tomorrow represents the bare minimum and is simply a minimalist implementation of the international ICCAT recovery plan. While there are some slight improvements, with the reduction of the amount of bluefin tuna that can be caught and tightening of controls, it still falls far below what scientists believe is necessary to give the bluefin stock a fighting chance of recovery.
But I insist once again that there is nothing stopping the EU from adopting more ambitious measures. That is what I expected to have in the report and that is the least we can do in the future, especially when we meet with the other ICCAT contractual parties in November."@en1
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