Strasbourg, 17/06/2010 (Agence Europe) - With adoption of the report by Raül Romeva i Rueda (Greens/EFA, Spain) by 564 votes in favour, 9 against and 5 abstentions in plenary session on Thursday 17 June in Strasbourg, the European Parliament gave its endorsement at first reading to the compromise reached on 7 April on the proposal that establishes a Community catch documentation programme for bluefin tuna (EUROPE 10115). This programme aims to transpose into Community law the decisions taken on November 2009 by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT). The text amended by the Parliament aims to strengthen or specify certain provisions of the system resulting from the latest ICCAT decisions.
According to the amended draft regulation, every batch of bluefin tuna should be accompanied by catch documentation completed at almost every stage of the conservation chain from the time of the catch, including during offloading, trans-shipment, cageing, harvest, import, export and re-exportation. This documentation should be validated at every stage by the authorities of the flag state, the tuna trap or farm, and comprise a broad range of data on: - catches (name of ship or tunny net, flag state, quantities caught, place and catch method); - exporter or seller; - trans-shipment (name of vessels, date, port, description of product, weight); - farm (name, date when put in cage, estimated quantities of fish); - harvest (date, number of fish, mark numbers); - and trade (description of product, point and date of export, details of exporting company). The provisions foreseen also include a ban on trans-shipment at sea, in order to prevent fraud relating to the origin of bluefin tuna, new constraints regarding the duration of the harvest season for fish in cages, and specific instructions concerning the issue, completion and validation of catch documentation.
It should be noted that the regulation on this catch documentation programme would have lost a great deal of its significance if CITES had decided, last March, to suspend the international trade of bluefin tuna. Today, this regulation is called upon to complete the other measures (volumes of fishing possibilities, minimal size of fish sold, fishing seasons) aimed at protecting the stock to a maximum, as it is a known fact that stocks of bluefin have nearly been exhausted. The vote on Thursday, which confirms the agreement between Council and Parliament negotiators, will allow the rules to take effect within the next few months. (E.H./L.C./transl.jl)