The EU Commission has adopted rules for the implementation of last year’s IUU regulation, but environmentalists voiced concern that some salmon stocks have been excluded.
The Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing regulation was adopted in September 2008, and will enter into force on Jan.1 next year. It will control all landings and transhipments of third-country fishing vessels in Community ports and all trade of marine fishery products to and from the Union.
The goal of the regulation is to combat illegal fishing by making sure that none of its products end up on the Community market. According to the Commission, it is estimated that IUU fishing accounts for almost 20 percent of all marine catches in the world, with a value of approximately 10 billion Euros every year. This makes IUU fishing the second largest producer of fishery products in the world.
Despite having one of the largest fishing fleet in the world, the Union is also the single largest importer of fishery products, the Commission points out. According to its estimations, the EU imports approximately 500,000 tonnes of fisheries products every year, worth 14 billion Euros. 45,000 tonnes of those products (9 percent) or 1.1 billion Euros (10 percent of the value) could originate from illegal fishing, the Commission says, remarking that “in other words, the EU market provides a trade outlet for roughly 10 percent of the fish caught in violation of conservation and management measures”.
“Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing is currently one of the most serious threats to the sustainable exploitation of marine resources. It jeopardises the marine environment, the sustainability of fish stocks and marine biodiversity”, said Fisheries Commissioner Joe Borg, adding that “illegal fishing practices are simply intolerable, and we need to eradicate them inside and outside the EU market”.
The new implementing rules provide the legal and technical framework for the implementation of the IUU Regulation, including rules for access to designated Community ports by third-country fishing vessels and inspection.
The Commission admitted that it was aware of problems some countries, especially developing nations, may have complying with the new rules, and said it was committed to assist them in that.
In a press release commenting on this new step in the European Union’s campaign against IUU fishing, the Oceana organisation, a global network with 300,000 members and activists, welcomed the adoption of the implementation rules, but warned that there were loopholes.
Oceana’s concern related to the exclusion of fresh and frozen Atlantic and Pacific salmon.
“It is a well known fact that IUU salmon fisheries occur, and therefore salmon should not be excluded from the IUU regulation”, the press release said.
As an example, Oceana cited studies that have shown that actual catches of Russian sockeye salmon are 60-90 percent higher than reported.