A petition signed by 172,120 citizens calling for an end to overfishing and for the seas and oceans to be protected was submitted to Swedish Secretary of State for the Environment Per Ängquist on the sidelines of the informal meeting of European environment ministers (see other articles) which opened in Sofia on Tuesday 10 April.
The petition was launched in October 2017 on the initiative of the NGOs Our Fish, Seas at Risk and WeMove.eu. It calls on member states to honour their commitments on clean and healthy seas and oceans and to end overfishing by 2020 at the latest (managing catch levels according to the principle of maximum sustainable yield).
The text of the petition calls for more to be done to end overfishing and for at least 30% of EU seas to become marine protected areas. Further ambitious measures should, it says, be taken to achieve ecologically diverse, clean and healthy seas as prescribed by EU law. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)