The EU Commission’s recent action plan for the threatened shark stocks was “welcomed” by the Union Fisheries ministers at Thursday’s Council meeting, the Council conclusions supporting the idea to implement some elements of the plan “without delay”.
The Ministers commended the plan “particularly in the light of the need to urgently enhance further actions oriented towards sustainable shark management and conservation by the Community”.
The Commission presented its proposal for a Community action plan for the conservation and management of sharks in February. The background was the shark populations’ significant decline globally and, for some species, even a real threat of extinction. Researchers have used fishermen’s notes and archives to show that numbers has declined by as much as 99 per cent in the last two centuries. Nowadays 47 species of sharks should still be living in the Mediterranean, but many of them had not been seen for decades.
“Men have become more dangerous to sharks than they ever were to human beings”, the Council wryly stated in a background press release.
The Council already adopted catch limitations for sharks, skates and rays and a decrease of deep sea sharks catches to zero by 2010 at its December and October meetings last fall, however softening the Commission’s and scientific/conservationist calls for tougher measures.
The 14 points in the Council Conclusions from Thursday’s meeting included an endorsement of the overall approach in the proposed action plan, and a call to the Commission to present “as quickly as possible” a more detailed timetable for the various actions set out in the plan.
On other points on the Council agenda, Commissioner Joe Borg introduced the Green Paper on Union fisheries reform โ officially presented the day before โ and the Commission’s recent communication on the development of the aquaculture sector. The Czech Presidency said it plans to present draft conclusions on the latter for the June session, the last meeting before Sweden takes over the chair.
An added item at Thursday’s session was a request by Holland, supported by Denmark, Greece and Poland, for stronger export/import rules for eel products to or from non-EU countries. The Commission’s representative at the meeting agreed that member states should ensure that glass eels are only exported in accordance with Union rules, but that does not hinder them from implying stricter national export rules.