Brussels, 01/04/2003 (Agence Europe) - Last week the European Parliament adopted the report of Salvador Jové Peres (GUE, Spain), which amends certain aspects of a proposal on the setting up of an international verification and follow-up system for catches of tuna to be used for avoiding the catching of dolphins. This proposal aims to incorporate international obligations into Community law, which the Community is committed to and which commits its accession procedure to the Inter-American Committee on tropical tuna wand which decided to provisionally apply the agreement on the International Programme for the Conservation of Dolphins (APICD).
Parliament has introduced provisions so that this system is applied that the tuna fished in the zone gets to the consumer (those in charge of the processing tuna will have to keep a register that allow the numbers of batches of tuna are contained in the number corresponding to the follow-up document. Other amendments underline that the European Commission will have to assume responsibility for the implementation of these commitments that it has taken on behalf of the Community and, therefore, for the costs committed by Member States for control measures to be paid out of the Community budget. In this context, it is recommended that the Commission: provisionally delegates Member States with the responsibility for checking the tuna caught, transported and unloaded by boats; creates an information data base on the setting up of a tuna verification system from data from Member States; quality controls of the information transmitted to regional fishing organisations with which it is associated.