Time is quickly closing on the November ICCAT meeting in Paris that many see as a final stand in the struggle for the survival of the bluefin tuna, and it still remains for the EU to find a common position.
The annual meeting of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), expected to agree the future management of the severely threatened Atlantic bluefin tuna stock, will take place in Paris on 17-27 November.
The Commission, represented by Fisheries Commissioner Maria Damanaki, will speak for the European Union, and under normal circumstances the fisheries ministers would gave given her that mandate with little further ado at their Council meeting on 25 October after just letting her hear their opinions.
This time, however, Damanaki, snubbed by the Council, was sent back to later present a formal proposal that would be dealt with in Council sub-assemblies.
Sweden, the UK and Germany had sided with the Commissioner, while France, Italy and Greece mustered enough support from other member nations to end up with this non-decision.
Making it clear that she would make sure to have the full weight of the whole Commission behind her when she returned, Damanaki said that she would first present her proposal to that body, and to have it formally adopted there.
On Tuesday 9 November she presented the Commission proposal, to be discussed and possibly adopted on the following Friday by COREPER, an assembly consisting of the member nations’ deputy EU ambassadors.
While Damanaki as late as last month called for a “significant reduction” in bluefin tuna catches, the new proposal only mentions “a reduction of the total allowable catches [TACs] of bluefin tuna based on science”, mentioning no figures.
The Commissioner herself however described it as “a major step forward”, a step which would be “much more effective than an approach [followed in the past] that would simply aim at adjusting catches around last year’s figures”.
Environmental groups were less impressed, and Sergi Tudela, head of the fisheries programme for WWF, said that he could “appreciate the fact that it is pointing to the need for a reduction on the TAC…but the more negative side is that there are not figures here. This leaves the mandate too open”.
On another note, and in view of the upcoming ICCAT meeting, the world’s largest ocean conservation organisation OCEANA published a statement reiterating that “the demand for sharks and bluefin tuna is driving populations towards extinction”.
And the WWF published a report from a consortium of investigative journalists that revealed a complex international black market in East Atlantic bluefin tuna worth an estimated €3 billions.
Interviewed about the fishery’s workings between 1998 and 2007, French fishing captain Roger Del Ponte told the reporters that “everyone cheated. There were rules, but we didn’t follow them.”
Recent data gathered from ICCAT by WWF confirm that rule-flouting in the Mediterraneanbluefin tuna fishery was still widespread during the 2010 fishery.