Brussels, 13/06/2007 (Agence Europe) - The European Association of Mediterranean Tuna Purse Seiners has said that the tuna management measures adopted by the Council of Ministers on 11 June (see EUROPE 9443) are discriminatory. It claims there were several breaches of procedure in the adoption of the regulation and has taken the matter to the European Court of Justice.
“It is unthinkable that certain sections of the fleet that are specially protected by the Commission do not suffer in any way from this regulation and others are literally condemned to death,” said Mourad Kahoul, the leader of the Association which represents especially French and Italian tuna purse seiners. These latter say the market is “flooded” with small bluefin tuna, juveniles caught by hundreds of vessels from the Basque region of Spain, “which enjoy total immunity”. Spanish rod-and-line vessels enjoy an exemption which allows them to continue to catch young tuna of 6.4 kg (rather than the 30 kg which is the general rule). Croatian vessels can catch 8 kg tuna. “The supposed collapse of bluefin tuna stocks must, then, stop at their respective doors,” claim the Mediterranean tuna purse seiners. “The regulation is riddled with discriminatory, inconsistent scientifically indefensible points,” the Association says, and it predicts “a turnaround in the situation” after the recourse to the justice system “to condemn these breaches in procedure and this unfair treatment”. (lc)