Brussels, 30/09/2010 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 28 September, while addressing the European Parliament's fisheries committee, Alain Cadec (EPP, France) denounced the situation of the canned tuna industry in Papua New Guinea.
In order to enter the European market, any fisheries product imported into the European Union must be caught by a European crew, a European vessel, in European territorial waters or in the territorial waters of countries with which the Union has fisheries agreements. And yet, since 2008, a derogation to these rules has allowed Papua New Guinea to produce tuna preserves from fish caught all over the world as their origin is impossible to trace.
Alain Cadec expressed indignation at the unfair competitive situation towards the European tuna fisheries and tuna processing industry. “Papua New Guinea has in very little time become a paradise for Asian tuna preserves. Countries like China and the Philippines seize the opportunity of the breach opened up by the European Commission to develop processing plants in an exponential manner, which in time could make Papua New Guinea the only tuna processing country in the world. This is an aberration for European processing and production”, he states in a press release.
Alain Cadec considers the agreement goes too far in trade liberalisation. He does not wish to question the need for economic partnership agreements for development but underlines that the processing plants concerned employ only very small numbers of local people and that thousands of European jobs are directly threatened. “This partnership agreement must be amended at all cost”, he concluded. (L.C.)