Brussels, 12/04/2013 (Agence Europe) - More than 200 environmental organisations, including Greenpeace, Pew, Oceana and WWF, announced on Thursday 11 April that they have written to EU fisheries ministers to ask them to back the European Parliament's aim of putting an end to overfishing and restoring depleted fish stocks by 2020, and the desire of the Irish Presidency of the EU Council for agreement to be reached in June (see EUROPE 10825). The fisheries ministers will be meeting on 22 April to discuss the negotiations.
The NGOs point out that the EU is legally required to restore fish stocks to a sustainable level under the United Nations Convention the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) of 1982 and commitments made at the Earth Summit in Johannesburg in 2002, a promise renewed at the Rio+20 Summit in June Rio+20.
The NGOs urge the Council of Ministers to respect the European Parliament's wishes, expressed in a wide majority (502 to 137) that overfishing be ended by 2015 and stocks restored to the maximum sustainable yield (in other words, where fish stocks are large enough to ensure survival of the species) by 2020. The organisations are unhappy that, in its general guidelines, the Council of Ministers rejected these targets and urge it to review its position in order to give some meaning to what is supposed to be a policy of preventing fish from becoming extinct.
The associations say that similar fish stock recovery targets have been set by Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Russia and the United States. The NGOs point out that 47% of fish stocks in the Atlantic and 80% in the Mediterranean have been overfished. (LC/transl.fl)