At their plenary session on Thursday 19 September, MEPs debated the possible extradition of Paul Watson, the Canadian environmental activist and founder of the Sea Shepherd organisation. Arrested in Greenland last July, he is currently being held in Denmark, which is examining an extradition request from Japan, which is prosecuting him for actions taken in 2012 against illegal whaling.
The European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, Stella Kyriakides, opened the discussions by noting the essential role of environmental law defenders in “guaranteeing the rule of environmental law”.
Although she referred to the EU Human Rights Defenders Mechanism, which has already helped more than 60,000 activists, and to Directive 2019/1937 (see EUROPE 12212/11), the Commissioner acknowledged that “improvements are still needed”, in particular to strengthen the protection of whistleblowers against reprisals and to improve sanctions against those who seek to intimidate them.
Although Ms Kyriakides did not make any specific criticism of Denmark, she reminded the Member States of their responsibility as parties to the Aarhus Convention, in particular through the implementation of two recent legislative advances – the ‘anti-SLAPPs’ directive (see EUROPE 13304/5) and the directive on the protection of the environment through criminal law (see EUROPE 13413/34) – to combat abusive prosecutions.
The majority of MEPs expressed their concerns. “We are talking about the detention, in a Member State of the European Union, of an environmental activist for actions related to the denunciation of crimes that are illegal under international law”, said an indignant Leire Pajín (S&D, Spanish).
Yvan Verougstraete (Renew Europe, Belgian) called on the EU to protect the activist, who faces up to 15 years in prison in Japan. Marie Toussaint (Greens/EFA, French) insisted that the country was “violating international law” and urged the EU to take action on behalf of environmentalists.
On the far right, there were divergent views. Virginie Joron (PfE, French) pointed out that this case posed a legal difficulty, as “Japan, having left the international moratorium on whaling, is acting within a different legal framework”, while criticising the disproportionate nature of the proceedings. Siegbert Droese (ENS, German), for his part, described Mr Watson as an “environmental terrorist” and called for his immediate extradition. (Original version in French by Nithya Paquiry)